


A Body To Jar

by GothMoth



Series: Phantom Phang Phucking Phreaking Phantastical Phabulous Phic Phight Phics 2.0 (The 2020 Edition) [3]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: All The Ghosts A Vaguely Protective Of Danny, Angst, Antagonist Fenton’s, Bad Parenting, Bad Science, Blood and Gore, Broken Bones, Burning, Cannibalism, Cause I wanted To Be More Creative Than That, Character Death, Chemical Weapons, Child Neglect, Dissection Be To Basic, Dissection Free, Dissociation, Dissolving, Drowning, Ectobiology, Force-Feeding, Freezing, Gen, Ghosts Are Tiny, Gore, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Impalement, Just A Lot Of Torture, Kidnapping, Melting, Missing Limbs, Murder, Not For Maddie And Jack Though, Overpowered! Danny, Poisoning, Stabbing, The Fenton's Definitely Qualify As Terrorists In This, Torture, Torture Time Yay!, Unethical Experimentation, Violence, Vore, Worldbuilding, boiling, borrower au, eventual happy ending i swear, ghost culture, swarming, the Fenton's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 10:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23469736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothMoth/pseuds/GothMoth
Summary: Ghosts are small things a cruel world. Danny is far too familiar with how this fact often hits close to home.
Relationships: Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton
Series: Phantom Phang Phucking Phreaking Phantastical Phabulous Phic Phight Phics 2.0 (The 2020 Edition) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685341
Comments: 54
Kudos: 308
Collections: Phic Phight!





	1. A Jarring Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueOatmeal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueOatmeal/gifts).



> Prompt Creator: BlueOatmeal  
> Prompt: Borrowers -- Everything is the same except ghosts are all fairy-sized. An ex-human would be about an inch tall for every foot tall they were in life.

Danny was glad to be back from his (definitely a punishment even if his parents wouldn’t admit that’s what it was) ‘vacation’ with Aunt Alicia. His body honestly ached all over, he was tempted to say it was actually worse than how he usually felt. Lifting hay and dealing with animals was a very different kind of work out than ghost fighting and flying around. He should probably start working out his human form in human ways honestly, the past week made that more than a little painfully obvious. 

Closing the house door with a soft click, he’s glad he can’t pick up on any really fresh scents from his parents. He needs to check the house over after all, who knows what they got up to while he’s been forced to be gone. Plus, Sam and Tuck telling him that ‘there really hasn’t been very many ghosts dude’ and ‘we’re fine Danny, it’s not that bad’ was frankly concerning; his friends probably thought it was calming though, they didn’t understand why he worried over the ghosts. 

He decides to work his way from the top, more than a little pleased his room looks untouched and the only fresh scents in there were that of his friends; probably to get supplies or use his drastically better and more interestingly stocked first aid kit. The living room turns up a bunch of rather nasty slightly mouldy food wrappers and ghost needlepoint (one of which was a blob ghost being dissected. Which he decidedly did not need to see); gross but not too worrying. The kitchen supplies a vial of blood blossom extract though, which absolutely is worrying. He wastes no time in completely destroying that and scouring every inch of the kitchen for even a drop more. He honestly spends too long doing that, his parents are bound to be home soon. 

So with a sigh, he clenches his fists and steels himself, it’s time to head for the lab. Hoping that his parents spent their week doing (yeah that is still definitely disturbing)needlepoint and checkers would be foolish. Heading down the steps quietly and a bit stiffly, he could hope they cleaned or just updated things... couldn’t he? 

Landing on the bottom, he breathes out slowly and opens his eyes to the lab, a little surprised to see it bathed in the eerie green swirling light of the ghost portal. He wished it wasn’t. Dropping his one arm from the wall he had been running it across as he descended, letting it fall limp to his side as he stares wide-eyed at the walls and walls of jars. Green light reflecting off of them faintly in every direction. Some green light filtering into the jars themselves only to mix with little white glows; some strong, some faint, and some nearly faded. And Danny knows that white glow, that specific kind of slightly staticy yet soft tiny white glow. The same glow that had plagued his existence with both pain and joy for the past two years. 

Swallowing hard he steps forward, towards the centre of the room, and looks around, practically spinning in place like he’s on some mockery of a carousel ride. There’s a hundred at least, maybe more; and their contents see him now. He nearly winces from the loud clanging, clinking, and scraping as they scratch at and bang into the jars to get his attention; it’s like a wind-chime horror show. Some of the jars make sloshing sounds which is far _far_ more disturbing and makes his stomach clench painfully. 

Danny walks to one of the jars with a more faded white glow, the fading need his help first and foremost. Lifting it gingerly and as quietly as he can off the shelf to cradle in his hands. Staring down at a tiny blue-skinned girl in old Roman clothes. They were shredded so horribly and she had so many burns, but that is not why he stares. No, it is not. He only vaguely notices the clothing actually. Instead, his eyes dance over the needles, shoved in at every angle, but with clear careful precision, through the jars glass and through the girl inside. Holding her form in the centre of the jar, with limbs at odd and grotesque angles; ectoplasm pooling beneath her. Danny puts the jar down on the table and turns to throw up when she tilts her head to look up at him and merely rests her cheek on one of the needles instead of begging and pleading; telling him so very much about just how much hurt she must have seen. 

Danny white knuckle grips the table as he wipes off his mouth and lets a tremor run through him. This was bad, so many levels beyond bad. Straightening up and grimacing at the jar before nodding to himself to just do what needs to be done. No time for sickness. Grabbing the lid on the jar and going to twist it off only to get shocked rather painfully by it; both him and the girl yelping from the unexpected pain. Danny because he wasn’t expecting to get hurt at all and her because she wasn’t expecting to get hurt in that particular way. 

Danny rubs his palm, wincing again though pain was a good thought cleanser for him, and looks to the jar, “sorry”. She just wheezes in response. While Danny looks around to see if maybe some of the others had different lids and thusly were not apparently _electrified_. His hopes were not met, but he’s not really surprised by that fact. It’s expected honestly. He can’t just get rubber gloves, it wasn’t just shocking him. If it was, he honestly would hardly even mind, electrocution was pretty come-by for him these days. Even if it was always so awful. But he couldn’t risk hurting her, or any of the others, any further than they clearly already had been. 

Rolling his shoulders he grabs a different jar, one with a little blob ghost inside and more or less unharmed, their glow bright and mostly healthy. He can man handle this one a bit without him running the risk of truly hurting the ghost inside. Carrying the jar to the desk set up with various microscopes and lenses. Pulling one of the larger magnifying glasses in front of his face, he sets to work trying to figure out what his parents did to the jar lids. 

Ten minutes later finds him with little headway and shifting a bit uncomfortably in the chair. Something was nagging at, pulling at, his mind and it was getting worse; making it progressively harder to concentrate. Sighing, he pushes the magnifying lens away from his face and leans back in the chair. Running a hand down his face and then through his hair with near painful roughness, before turning to look at the open portal. Was it just the fact that it was on and for so long? Leaving his lairs boarders functionally open to any possible invaders. Squinting at it, something wasn’t right. 

Danny gets up and ignores the way the little ghosts scratch at their jars and open their mouths soundlessly at him -there must be something about the jars either trapping their voices or preventing the creation of sound altogether- as he walks over to inspect the green swirling of the permanent gate between his worlds... and his grave. 

He _hated_ when they messed with it, when his parents fiddled with his resting place and murder weapon. Frankly didn’t even like them touching it. It felt... _wrong_ and defiling. Like his death was being mocked. He knew they didn’t know, meant nothing by it, were often trying to help his lair; but still, the feelings remained and reared their heads every time. Grimacing at it, at the light strange sparkling shimmer across the surface of it. If he squinted he could see himself reflected back coloured in shades of green by the light of the portal. What did they do to it? His skin twitching as he trances his fingers over the framework, looking for anything _off_ , anything not the same as it was on his deathday. Any alternations that _should not be there_. There are a few, have been for a while and he has to force down his revulsion and the sensation of hands poking what they shouldn’t, he needs to look for new changes, he can’t concentrate with his grave creeping him out with Its wrongness. Of course he just assumed it was only bothering him because something had been altered and he didn’t know what. That always irked him. 

But that was his first real mistake. 

Leaning in and pushing onto his tippy toes to reach the highest points of the portal only to tilt his head and sniff at the portal. There was a faint scent, but it was there and it didn’t belong. Ignoring the increase of clanging clinking horror show jar wind chime monstrosity his parents had effectively created as he leans his nose towards the portal a bit to place the scent. It was...oddly alluring, but the revulsion of his grave being messed with keeps it from really being enticing. Instead he just wants the odd scent to go somewhere else, it has no place clinging to the place of his death. It was no scent of his or what half ended him. 

Danny jumps a little and bangs his head on the portal frame when the lab lights flicker on. Him spinning around only to sigh and physically sag with relief when there’s no one else in the lab. His parents must have activated the labs remote start, meaning they’ll be home in about five. He barely had a chance to take in that fact as all the little ghosts shiver, their ecto-fields/glows shivering and waving too; growing even dimmer. 

Danny rushes over to one wall of jars, doing his best to ignore the states of the ghosts inside, and stares at the now lit up red circles under each jar. He could faintly see the ecto-energy leeching out of them, the jars, the ghosts, the ectoplasm pooled beneath their battered forms. Leeching away from the ghosts it belongs to and sustained, leeching into the red circle. He was thankful it was slow and faint enough to simply weaken and feed off the ghosts, not truly harm any of them. It was a small mercy, but his parents weren’t known for mercies, so it was a blessing really. It provided little mercy for the ones near faded though. 

How long had this been happening? How many days did it take for them to... _use up_ a ghost? They were such small things, there couldn’t be much. He swallows down the desire to vomit again. Not only was his stomach definitely empty already but he didn’t have time, they didn’t have time. 

Rushing back over to the desk, he would ignore the portal being _wrong_ , he didn’t have time. Blinking down at the jar with the blob ghost before looking up to the walls again. This time seeing and tracing his eyes over the cords skittering across the walls and shelves, eventually connecting to a generator. His parents were...using them as _batteries_. He shudders but squints at the generator, the house's electricity was feeding into it too. Why? 

Putting down the jar, he walks over and kneels by the generator, it was feeding electricity _to the jars_. Possibly charging them? Biting his lip, he can’t just turn it off, his parents would absolutely know and clearly just being away from the red circles wasn’t enough to negate the electrical charge to the lids. 

Getting an idea, Danny puts the jar back on its red circle and grabs the lid, wincing from feeling his own ecto-energy being sapped, it was minor but still unpleasant. Twisting the lid and being thankful for the lack of being electrocuted. Part of him wondering why the ghosts just don’t unscrew their lids themselves from the inside, but based on how none of them are floating; they must not be able to and thus not tall enough to reach the lids. Plus there was probably an anti-ecto coating or something. Danny having to actually pick the blob ghost out of the jar pretty well confirms his idea. The glass must negate powers in some way. He’s glad the little guy seems to recover near-instantly and floats out of his hand. 

Danny snatches them out of the air to stop them from flying to the portal. He doesn’t know what his folks did to it yet, he wouldn’t put it past them to make it unsafe to pass through. So he promptly stuffs the blob ghost into one of the thermoses he keeps intangibly hidden in the lab walls. Before moving back to the Roman ghost, twisting the lid off as quick as he can after putting the jar back on a red circle. He doesn’t want her to get drained more than absolutely necessary. 

Pulling the needles out one by one feeling deeply disturbed but being as gentle as he can be. More than a little happy when he gets her out, though worried over her just laying in his palm; even if she squeezes at his thumb thankfully. He is a bit confused she points at his thermos, but her side-eyeing the portal with a shiver confirms Danny’s fears that they did something to it. So he places her gently into the thermos as well. 

Danny doesn’t get the chance to start opening up the next one as some sort of soft pale blue mist jets out from the top of the portal frame. The sparkling to the portal increasing while all the ghosts start clanging on their jars with renewed vigour and desperation. Danny absolutely acknowledges the warning behind their actions this time, whatever that mist was it must be what allowed his parents to trap _so many ghosts_ and so quickly. 

Getting off the chair and backing away a bit, he quickly phases the thermos back into the wall; hopefully, that will serve to protect the two ghosts. That action costs him dearly though, but he wouldn’t make any other, protecting was his purpose. His everything more often than not. He simply underestimated how quickly the mist would spread, how quickly it would act and affect; though surely his halfa state slowed it down some. Which really only means regular ghosts would never really stand a chance. 

He loses his human form and his consciousness to a cacophony of clanging jars, splashing ectoplasm, and nails scratching glass.


	2. Frosty Reception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Queue the suffering

Kitty watches from one of the high up jars in horror as the mist coils over Phantom. She’s not sure why exactly, that even as the mists aroma lulled the ghost to the surface of him and took his awareness away with it, he simply stayed on the floor and coiled up to stare at the portal instead of actually being drawn to it. The pull was obviously there but something stronger was turning him off from it. 

It does make her feel a bit better though, maybe once he gets his bearings back he’ll be fine, won’t get pulled into the electrical trap embedded in the portal that got the rest of them. 

That hope dies a quick and painful death as she silently wheezes, seeing the two _hunters_ -whose only good deed or use was bringing Phantom into the universe- come pounding down the stairs. Watching the large one pick him up and laugh, he speaks though she can’t hear it through the glass. The smaller _hunter_ smirks and flicks at the dazed Phantom, before grabbing up the jar Phantom just freed Remi from. The bigger _hunter_ tossing him inside unceremoniously and with a laugh that rattles her jar and all the others. 

She crawls to the back of her glass Hell and slumps down just as she watches Phantom splash into Remi’s pooled ectoplasm. The _Hunters_ probably thought she faded. Good, they won’t go looking then. Besides, why would they bother searching when their manufactured aroma would bring the ghosts to them and when they had so many of them already to... _play with._ Especially now that Phantom was here. Everyone knew how all _hunters_ so badly wanted to get their cruel hands on the halfa. Even the ones that were his makers. 

She does smirk hallowly with a level of vindictive satisfaction when they place his jar on a red circle thing and his glow flares up so bright it dazes the _hunters_. Phantom was strong, he’d last longer than the rest of them. Maybe that would give him enough time to save the day, he was really good at that. 

* * *

Danny groans and flops over, the sound of the thick familiar splashing of ectoplasm is enough to jerk him into consciousness though. Sitting up then and practically flinging himself backwards into something hard and smooth, at the distorted sight of his mom’s large grinning face. The distortion the...glass -yeah that was definitely glass- gives to her faces makes the smile Chester-like and vastly more unnerving. 

Standing up he huffs and tries summoning an ecto-blast, not really surprised when nothing happens and definitely unwilling to give his mom the satisfaction of him looking caught off guard or bothered by that fact. Though he holds back his smirk at her smile looking like it faltered for a second. Obviously she expected him to become upset or scared; aggressive maybe. He absolutely was scared, but no way was he going to make that known. Fear was something he was _excellent_ at hiding now. 

Maddie rolls the jar around in her palms and Danny curls into a ball to keep from getting pretty well tossed around. Deciding that had been a very good idea when she shakes it. Wincing hard but clenching his jaw shut to keep from crying out every time he hits the lid; definitely coated in something anti-ecto and definitely painful. It’s not like they ever made things that weren’t painful for ghosts nowadays anyway. It’s expected. Shouldn’t be, but it is. 

He can see her sigh when she puts down his jar, it only took him a few seconds to shoo away his dizzy spell. Being tossed around was nothing new. He can see her lean back in her chair and say something to his dad. He wishes he could read lips. But he takes this time to look to the portal, able to make out the small (distorted looking, thanks to the glass) tube devices mere inches from where his searching fingers had once been. He bangs his head against the glass, if he had just moved his fingers slightly more he would have found what he was looking for. He wouldn’t be here. He’d be freeing the others. If push came to shove he’d have just telekinetically floated away all the jars to hide in his room walls. Come back down here one jar at a time to use the red circles to free them. But it was too late now. He fucked up. Pretty badly based on his position on a shelf; a shelf that was nowhere near the others. Made sense, him, Phantom, was ‘the big prize’ and notorious for both his escapes from hunters and malfunctioning their equipment. He’d be watched more closely and they’d keep everything away from him just in case he somehow used it to escape. They probably also thought he’d find some way to plot with the other ghosts, even though they wouldn’t even be able to hear him, if he was placed anywhere near the others. To be fair, they were right. 

Deciding to test something out, he tries to whisper as he sits down, struggling not to jerk from his larynx spasming painfully and constricting, making him very thankful he doesn’t need to breathe. Alright, talking was out; somehow he gets the feeling his parents included this purely for him. 

Clicking his jaw shut and staring defiantly down at his parents as they smirk at him and laugh to each other. Obviously they noticed his attempt at talking and took a level of sick satisfaction in it failing miserably. He also firmly tries to ignore the other ghosts in his line of vision giving him sad looks. 

Choosing instead to look his hands over while his parents gather things, he doesn’t want to know what but it’s probably for him. Shaking his head to clear it and focusing on his hands, or more so his glow. It was strange it flaring up outside of his control entirely. He knew it gave away a lot about his power level, something he’d rather his parents not really be truly aware of. But maybe it comforted the other ghosts. Knowing that one stronger than them got caught to, meaning they weren’t ‘weak’ for getting caught themselves. 

Cringing down at the green mess at his feet, at least he knew she’d be fine where she was. But why couldn’t they have stuck him in the blob ghosts jar instead? That small mercy would have been nice. Trying to scoot to where it was cleaner and ignoring the smell of spilt ectoplasm threatening to bombard his nose, while he tries to figure out how to get out of this mess. Right now this was just a problem to solve, nothing more. Just a job to do, he could freak out about this later. Swallowing and hating how his throat squeezes painfully at that, Jazz would kill him for shrugging off so much as a problem for later and for doing it so often. He had to though. Some days it was just a fight, sparring and protecting; but some days it was about survival, his own and others. The world was cruel, especially to small things like them. There wasn’t any room for him to be weak, to breakdown. A shield with cracks was a shield that broke. He had to be a titanium guard dog, unwavering and ever-present. He shouldn’t have gone to aunt Alicia’s, he should have fought to stay or been better at duplication. Hopefully, from here on out, he’s the only one who would have to suffer for his mistakes. Glancing at the other jars surrounding the room, he knows that hope won’t get met. 

Getting jerked out of his thoughts by his dad slamming a big tank-like thing onto the ‘experimentation’ lab station. If the glass of the jar didn’t distort things so much he’d probably be able to read the label, the jars were probably designed that way on purpose. So the ghosts, so all of them, couldn’t truly see what was coming or gather information to plot with. He hoped it was more the second option than the first. He’s been doing a lot of hoping lately. But that’s what made up most of this hero thing, vain blind foolish hope. That luckily often worked out. When it didn’t though...he shudders over thoughts of _Dan_ and Spectra. Was it bad that one of his current hopes was that Vlad would show up? The guy was crazy, not evil, Vlad wouldn’t allow this. Danny’s not sure what his parents even classify as anymore. 

Danny glares at Jack’s massive face as he takes his jar off the shelf, Danny’s hackles rising at the definitely giddy cruel grin; he honestly couldn’t see much else past Jack’s massive smiling teeth. Some days being so much smaller than everything still filled him with abject terror. He’s not sure if spending more or less time in ghost form helped with that. He’d ask Vlad, but he spent less time in ghost form than Danny did and was decidedly not okay with being small. Hence why Vlad loved duplication so much. One mouse was an annoying problem, twenty mice was terrifying. 

Danny grumbling, wincing over his throat, when Jack manhandles his jar, functionally tossing him around and getting him splattered in ectoplasm. Wiping his face off after his jar gets put down before snapping his head up at a clicking sound. Seeing a plate section of the lid slide open revealing a hole half his own size at best; even a toddler ghost wouldn’t fit through that without body manipulation, which Danny definitely can’t do right now. Paling a bit at what he easily recognises as the tip of a funnel being stuck in the hole. 

Scrambling to stand up and pressing himself against the glass, trying to get a good look at what they’re doing. Also trying to ignore more malicious grinning from his mom while his dad grabs up the tank thing. Okay, this is officially a serious emergency situation. Swallowing harshly, he never really believed Jazz’s assurances that their parents would love and accept him. Clenching his fists, he hardly has a choice but to risk it now, and summons out his rings. Or at least he _tries to._ Snapping his head down to his chest with mute horror; _all_ his powers were blocked, even the ones other ghosts just _did not have._

Seeing movement out of the corners of his eyes gets him to notice how all the other ghosts were clanging their jars around. This was not good, and obviously they knew what he had just attempted at doing. They were scared. Scared _for him._ He doesn’t get to dwell on that due to his dad pouring whatever into his jar. Danny trying to avoid it and not breathe in the cold mist coming off the liquid. But something clicks, as avoiding the liquid very quickly becomes impossible, this was liquid nitrogen. _Why??? What does something like this prove?_

Danny is seriously thankful the mist from the liquid will block him and his jar from their view for a bit. Said mist only giving his body seconds of protection before starting to freeze. He’s much more thankful for his cold Core as ice coats him rapidly, him only having enough time to do the smart thing by closing his eyes and covering his nose and ears. Ice couldn’t truly hurt him, but this is definitely the coldest he’s felt since his Core stabilised. It’s enough to cause his skin to make aborted attempts at shivering, unable to act on it due to the ice. Feeling the cold seep inside himself, curling around his Core which naturally drops Its own temperature to protect It and him. Effectively ‘warming’ him some. The nitrogen was quickly feeling warmer than him. He’d rather not know what would happen if someone without an ice Core touched him right now. 

Danny does take a bit of spiteful glee at being able to stiffly move a bit, ice flaking and cracking off. Feeling bits shatter off his cheeks as he gives a cheeky smirk to his frowning mom. Obviously she wasn’t happy he was ‘okay’. Danny’s grin drops when they grab up another jar with a young dragonling ghost inside. Stiffly jerking his limbs over to press his hands against the glass on the other end of his jar. His throat spasming as he tries to shout at his parents through barely parted teeth. Trying to tell them to stop. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t let them. 

Collapsing to his knees and staring wide-eyed as they pour the liquid in and the young ghost starts freaking out. Thrashing around and trying to flap their little wings to get away; too small and too young to be a skilled flyer yet. Subsequently pitching in the air and splashing into the nitrogen, wing and side freezing instantly. Their mouth opening in a soundless scream, Danny’s tears freezing to his face as the liquid fills the ghost's mouth as if in slow motion. Watching them thrash for a few seconds, the nitrogen splashing around and Danny swears he can hear it. He knows that’s just in his head. He knows this. But it doesn’t matter. Not in the slightest. He’s still ‘hearing’ it. 

The only thing he can really bring himself to do is dig his claws into the glass slightly, of course all that does is make slight scraping sounds, but it’s enough. Real sound, he needs the real sound. There’s nothing he can do. Nothing else. For him or for the little ghost. Watching as the ghosts ectoplasm, everything far too cold for it, starts reacting. Letting Danny see _exactly_ what they expected from him. Wanted for him. The ghost shakes and writhes, ectoplasm bubbling and popping grotesquely, bubbles near-instantly freezing before exploding into frozen shards over and over again. Danny flinching back from the glass slightly when a portion of their barely recognisable disfigured tail slaps into the side of their jar closest to Danny’s. 

It’s enough to shock him out of the ability to cry. His arms stiffly flopping down into the mildly warm feeling nitrogen in his jar. Watching almost blankly as his... parents add some kind of gas into the jar. The gas clings to the ghosts ectoplasm, to the nitrogen ectoplasm soup. Danny jerks again from the nitrogen seemingly violently separating and splashing away from the ectoplasm, freezing the jar walls leaving him unable to see what’s going on inside. 

Danny looks up at his mom looming over his jar, her grin is more in vision than everything else. The fuzzy blue jumpsuit shaped wall, the blurry gas pump as she screws it to the hole on his jar and pumps in the gas. Danny wincing and hissing as the nitrogen rips away from him, feeling like it’s taking the top layer of his skin and organs with it in the process to freeze against the glass. The jar heating up painfully fast, his Core overworking Itself to readjust Its/his temperature to keep up. Leaving him groaning and laying on the ground as all the nitrogen steams off the glass and out the hole in the lid. Absentmindedly noting how everything smelt vaguely like tear gas but with a sweet undertone. Of course his parents would be the kind of people to discover how to instantly neutralise and destroy liquid nitrogen, only to use it for...for something like this. 

Danny wheezes and forces himself up off the bottom of his jar, looking to the other jar. He needed to know if they were okay. He’s never felt thankful for his parents' frugality with ‘specimens’ and preferring to ‘recycle’ the same ones repeatedly. He shouldn’t feel thankful for that. But he does at seeing the other ghosts ectoplasm reforming into the general state of a dragonling. Foaming and bubbling still, but not destabilising. 

Danny throws a glare at his dad when he grabs up the other jar and swirls it around. Making the weakly reforming ghost inside slide around, still too damaged to be anything other than a vaguely solid liquid. Normally the ectoplasm, the ghost, would float around, be able to ‘float ’. Whatever these jars were made of blocked even the most basic inherent nature of ectoplasm. 

Danny follows Jack with his eyes as he puts the jar back on the shelf, feeling sick. They shouldn’t have to be used as some bastardisation of a battery. Especially not now. His parents couldn’t even have enough of a heart to let them rest. 

Maddie shakes his jar, flinging him into the sides a couple of times. Apparently annoyed at him ignoring whatever she may have been doing in favour of watching after the damage younger ghost. Probably thinks he’s plotting something. Since, in her mind, there’s was no way he could be feeling anything for the other ghost. No way he could possibly care or be hurting over the other ghosts suffering. He knows, he’s sure, that to her doing that. Hurting that other ghost in front of him/near him like that, was either meaningless or done to ‘frighten’ him. Maybe they thought that if he ‘knew how he was supposed to react’ then he would react the same. 

He glares but presses himself against the side of the glass farthest away from her face and hands as she lifts up his jar and stares in at him. Baring his teeth at her more so on ghostly instinct than anything else. Though maybe if he annoys and confuses them enough -he’s good at that- they’ll focus on him and not the others. He doesn’t want that to happen again, not to any of the others. 

Maddie rolls her eyes and looks like she’s snorting, the warp the glass gives to her face makes it look more like a feral snarl. He snarls right back, any other ghost would do the same, he’s okay with that. He’s a ghost, he’s going to act like one. In a way, he knows that frustrated his parents. How he could be a typical ghost only sometimes and in only some ways. 

She shakes his jar again, flinging him painfully into the lid again. His suit and arm stinging with the burn of the anti-ecto contact and a zap of electricity. Landing on his back on the bottom and glaring up a bit tiredly when she grabs the lid purely to electrocute him. Numbly thinking that was just mean. Rolling onto his side and looking away when his dad walks over and squeezes her shoulder comfortingly. Probably calming her from being annoyed at him not reacting like they wanted. 

Apparently she was annoyed enough by his ‘lack of a proper reaction’ to try again but differently. Roughly pacing his jar down enough to bounce him in the air a little. Landing on his feet and smirking as if the action of him not landing on his ass was an act of spite instead of good reflexes. Choosing to lean against the part of the curved glass that is the farthest away from where he knows that stupid hole is. Growling at the hole when she slides the cap to open and sticks the end of a clear tube in. He figures out why she’s using a tube this time as she shakes around his jar like she’s mixing sauce in it while pumping in cold water. Regular cold water. Which of course only serves to make him wet, in human form being shoved in a jar full of water would be a bit of an issue. Breathing was something he at least somewhat needed in that form. But he wouldn’t be in here at all if he could be human right now. 

When she stops shaking him around the water’s almost...nice. It’s a good temperature for him and he floats in it. It’s nice to be floating again. So he clings to the sensation of floating, simply existing with nothing else solid touching any part of him. Pushing the feeling of his aching muscles, pulsing overworked Core, and slightly raw outer ectoplasm/skin to the back of his mind. The phantom feelings of electrical current skittering over his skin and through his flesh is harder to ignore though, now that the other pains lay forgotten. Especially when she grabs the lid again, electrical current running through the glass and water, making it much _much_ worse. Curling in on himself and whining soundlessly, making the tight spasming of his throat another pain to deal with at the moment, while his ectoplasm based muscles seize and foam under his skin. 

His ectoplasm, and mind if he’s honest, always reacted to electrocution the worst. All ghosts were that way if attacked with the thing that killed them. But he refused to let them, his parents, know that. Know what hurt him most, even if it couldn’t permanently damage him. The only upside to being harmed by what killed you, a natural defence from it. No ghost could ever be destroyed or brought near fading, near dying again, by what killed them. They couldn’t know what worked best against him, what would deter him the most; even if it wouldn’t end him. They might figure out how he died, and no ghost wanted humans to know the ‘how’ of their death. Hunters, humans in general really, would use it against them gladly. Him especially. At least with ghosts there was an unspoken code of honour. A respect for the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of another’s death. 

But hunters, they didn’t care. No one respects a bug, and that’s all a ghost was to hunters. A very dangerous pest. Danny keeps his mind on this less than happy track purely as a distraction. He knows it’s unhealthy. That it’s fostering resentment towards not just his parents, but humans as a whole. But it was hard not to resent the ‘big guys’ when you were one of the ‘little guys’ they ran around stomping on. Sam would say he’s becoming bigoted and creating a false narrative or something, but he thinks it’s pretty fucking earned as his back arches from another electrical charge; tempting to force him to uncurl. 

Wheezing through his clenched teeth into his knees, adults forget the vulnerability of when they were small; it makes sense, it was a long time ago for them. That’s why teens were so quick to be okay with the little glowing creatures. They still remembered being small and the world being so big and too much. They could relate to some degree, not much but a little. That’s also why Vlad was so different from him. Why Vlad felt the need to make his ghost form as scary as can be. 

Blinking out of his thoughts from Jack shaking around his jar with much more force than his mom could muster. Being tossed around isn’t so bad now, gravity doesn’t apply much. And his dads' hands are so big they encompass the near whole of the jar, sending him into pleasant darkness. He’s always loved the dark, with its night and its stars. The glow of a town lit with fluorescents and incandescents. It was his time from the day he was born. It was always better to be awake when no one else was...

So much less painful. Even with the ghosts fights now, it was still less painful in the dark of night. 

Wincing and liquefying the ectoplasm that was acting as his neck bones, as much as he can anyway, after slamming into the lid at a rather nasty angle and snapping his neck. The sound feels like it reverberates through the water, hopefully those two won’t notice. He’d rather avoid them knowing he had bones, in a sense, for as long as possible. The anti-ecto burn making the break feel far worse than it actually is. But it is nice to know his ectoplasm can at least change slightly between solid and liquid. Not enough to truly do anything or even change to a gas enough to make his ghostly tail, but it was something else he could cling too. He didn’t have to worry about being too solid, about breaks. Though doing away with his bones always left him feeling a bit hallow. Same with sending away his organs. He might have to do both for a while though. He’ll hold off on that. 

Jerking and blinking from the sudden bright fluorescent lights of the lab as his dad basically tosses his jar to Maddie. Who tosses him into, what he thinks is the massive textured white of the freezer, like she’s throwing out a used up coffee pod. He’s seen her do that enough times to recognise the motion and apathetic facial expression that accompanies it even through the warping glass. 

He’s honestly happy when she closes the lid, eagerly welcoming the darkness in the cold water that’s soothing his aches. He thinks he’s okay not knowing if there’s anything in the water that he failed to pick up on. 


	3. Shake And Bake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hell is made of not only ice but fire

Danny would really like to be able to rub at his sore chest. His Core has never felt this overworked in his entire half-life. Everything around It ached with how hard It was vibrating. He gets why, having to go from his typical functioning temperature -though working cold through him to smooth his sore muscles- to drastically dropping Its temperature in seconds to compete with liquid nitrogen to rising his temperature to avoid being burned by the strange not-tear-gas. Then getting to return to Its typical homeostasis only to have to drop Its temperature slowly instead of quickly due to being in a freezer and slowing becoming an ice cube. Absently, Danny’s slightly impressed the glass jar didn’t break from the expanding ice. Of course it didn’t, that would make things too easy for him. The universe never made things easy for him. 

Now the ‘water’ was all solid ice and since he couldn’t use his intangibility, he was functionally completely immobile. He could blink and twitch but that was pretty well it. Thankfully, any ice that formed inside him didn’t last long, his Core leeching the cold out of all of it. It was feeding off the ice around him too, which is why he had enough wiggle room to twitch at all. At least it was increasing his healing factor a fair bit. Smirking into the darkness as much as he can, his parents would be pissed that their ‘experiment’ was actively repairing some of the previously inflicted damage. 

Not much time later, light filters into the freezer making Danny squint. If it wasn’t for ghosts having heightened senses he probably wouldn’t be able to see through the ice much beyond basic colours and general shapes. The warping effect of the glass only making it worse. But he can make out their eyes and teeth, that Maddie’s fingers were more pointed than Jack’s. Claws, teeth, and eyes; everything on a predator to watch out for. For signs of the hunt and violence. Jack wasn’t as sharp but he was much _much_ bigger. Bigger than everyone really, everyone Danny’s ever met anyways. Which, when you were much smaller than everyone fully living, that mattered a lot. It was both much more concerning and much easier to get away from. He’s often thankful for his dad's less detail-oriented mind and less sharp eyes. 

Jack picks his jar up and tosses it/him in the air, since he can’t move that just makes the world a complete white washed blur. But he’s safe in the ice and it’s comfortable, he’s okay. This is fine. It’s only too bad the whole ‘play dead by lying still’ thing won’t work for ghosts. Even if he was capable of ‘playing dead’ by turning into a pile of ectoplasmic goop - _Dan_ could though, so that might be a future trick to abuse- he wouldn’t be able to right now...probably anyway. He’s not a hopeful person. He hopes a lot, but he’s not really hopeful. He hopes, but he doesn’t actually believe in said hope. Sam says he’s becoming more of a pessimist than her even on her bad days. That probably says something less than positive about his mental state. 

Mentally pausing as he notices that the ice was way warmer way faster than it really should be. Sure if everything was normal, which it decidedly was _not_ , his Core could devour this amount of ice into Itself/him in seconds. Mentally prodding his Core and telling It to warm the Zone up, he’s got a bad feeling about this. 

His worries getting confirmed as the ice starts melting rapidly, the water starting to feel a touch too warm. The cold of his Core functionally keeps the ice around him from melting for the longest, though he’s able to move some. He elects to do nothing more than look around to avoid melting the ice any faster. Though he decides looking down was _not_ a good idea, as he can see the water starting to bubble on the bottom. Following one of the bubbles with his eyes as it floats up. Looking back down a little bug-eyed and actually taking in the heating element this time. Swallowing harshly and moving himself closer to the top of his jar, seeking out the slightly cooler water; which is definitely not cool anymore, as the last of the ice around him melts. 

He’s not even sure if his Core _could_ combat boiling water under normal conditions. He absolutely had a level of heat resistance, but only so far as his Core could cool him and the air around his skin. Being continuously set on fire, for example, was something his Core couldn’t handle. That one he knew from experience. 

Curling his hands and toes as their nerves start feeling far _far_ too warm, tingling and pulsing painfully with his ever-present weakened pulse. Heat beginning to radiate inside the tips and spread unnecessarily slowly through his hands and feet. 

His shoulders start to heat and burn, his suit bubbling like liquified flesh, a bit before his biceps and the rest of his legs start crying out in pain. Those limbs muscles, which previously were nothing more than filled with aches and fading electrical charges, starting to bubble under his skin. The ectoplasm that makes them up starting to shift and roll around utterly unnaturally. 

At this point, not screaming simply isn’t an option. Danny had his limits, everyone did. His own muscles boiling out of his skin, literally, was definitely past his. Opening his mouth and shrieking, no sound comes out of course as his throat spasms violently, the flesh and muscle there tearing itself apart from a three-sided assault of spasming muscles, attempting to force all the air left in him out at once, and boiling water practically being stuffed down his throat. Like all the lightning, fire, and knives in the world getting collectively and simultaneously stabbed into his throat. The white-hot pain making everything else go away for barely a second but it feels like minutes and he wishes it had been minutes after that fades. 

The rest of his body coming into acute awareness as his organs, which he absolutely should have liquified, start to boil in their own liquids. He’s sure that if he were human and someone with a particularly nasty diet were to slice him open, they’d find a fine extravagant spread of organs nearing overcooked and waiting to be dug into. 

The other thing he regrets is urging his Core to warm up. If he had just stayed cold, so very ice-cold, then the abrupt change from cold to boiling would have sent him into shock. This would be so so much better while in shock. Maybe he wouldn’t truly feel the heat emanating from the bones that were solid then. He forces enough self-control and awareness to liquify what he can, reduce his more human bits to ectoplasm. The pain reduces if only slightly, but his limbs still make jerky uncoordinated attempts at trying to swim away from the water. Only resulting in limp limbs flapping around like undercooked noodles and him breaking the waters surface slightly. Which burns him more, stinging at him and popping hot bubbles into his face before his body jerks away from the surface and the lid; after the lid ecto-burned him yet again, setting the boiled nerves of his shoulder and the back of his head on fire. 

He keeps trying to scream, keeps shoving more pain water down his throat, keeps bubbling and flailing. This is probably what they want. They’re probably so happy. He can’t tell. His vision of the world only a warped violently shaking kaleidoscope colours for a few seconds more, before he can feel his eyes boil and stream out of their sockets as bubbles. His head feeling stuffed full of fuzz like someone shaved off his hair, drilled a hole through his skull, and poured soda pop inside; then decided to staple it shut, hot glue the skin back down, and shake his head around. If he tore off his head and lobbed it at someone it would probably make an effective bomb. He would _really_ like to tear his head off right now. 

He knows why. It was his brain. The thing that actually registered any pain a human felt. He couldn’t truly do away with that thing, not without spreading it through the rest of his bodies ectoplasm. Which would probably make this way worse. See while humans registered all sensations with their brains, ghosts did it with their ectoplasm. _All of it._ From every hair to every toe. If he spread out his brain, he would only double the ability to feel sensations from the whole of him. His brain being boiled to a soggy crisp was the preferable option here. At least then he’d stop feeling things with that part of him. 

He can tell a very large amount of his ectoplasm was simmering over top of the water's surface. Catching and trapping in the water's steam and superheating the boiling ectoplasm even more. He’s thankful he can’t feel anything from that ectoplasm now. 

He giggles -or tries to, somehow the jar is still affecting the managed mess that was his ‘throat’ and tries strangling him with his own muscles some more- and weakly flails his one arm to slap into his face. He feels almost dizzy with giddiness, him thinking that he probably looks like some horror show bath fizzer now makes him attempt to giggle again. His body spreading out weirdly doesn’t make that mental image seem any less ridiculous. He thinks someone shook his jar again. He hopes whoever wore gloves, touching hot things wasn’t safe. No, doing that barehanded was very dumb. He fished cooked spaghetti out of the crockpot barehanded once. Why did he do that? He was a dumb boy. And now a hungry one. Noddles would be really nice. Maybe someone was making noddles, why else use a stove. Ghostly noodly Danny noodles. Were they going to scoop him out with a spoon and make a pasta dish? That would make Jazz sad when she came back from university. That was bad. He was bad. He probably wouldn’t taste very good anyways. 

Jerking some random part of himself at another electrical zap, but that gets him vaguely aware that he’s not all hot and steamy anymore. Kinda chilly actually and -oh Ancients, his chest is _screaming at him_ with aggressive angry super unhappy pulsing. How did he miss that earlier? His Core’s kinda soupy. Really probably should have noticed that. Weird. 

Rolling his head on the glass bottom after slamming into it and slugging himself around some. Only absentmindedly aware of being not all that solid at the moment. He finds himself blinking blurry eyes at the green swirly thing that he’s just gonna assume is the portal, not green cotton candy. A jolt of horror functionally snapping him out of his slight giddy unattached state, when he spots electricity zapping and coiling over something tiny and shiny floating kinda inside the portal, something trying to pass through the portal. He knows somethings wrong with it, wrong with his grave. 

Pushing himself up slightly with his sloppy slightly put together self and snarling, snarling to the best of his abilities, at the blue fuzzy blob slamming a net over the tiny shiny dot and shoving shiny dot at big orange fuzzy. Only needing a little more clarity to come to his vision to see the blue one actually shoved the shiny one into whatever the orange one is holding. His ectoplasms thought centres supplying the image of a jar, of hundreds of jars. He thinks his ghostly ‘brain’ is exaggerating the actual number. Maybe. But it gets the message across and it revolts him. The colour blobs, they, his...parents?, were using _his grave._ His _DEATH_. To capture, to trick, to _harm_. His creation, his very existence. The thing that created him, made his existence. Was being _used_ and _weaponised_. Been forged into a blatant undeniable tool of suffering. To _harm_ one half of what he was. _Harming_ those who he must protect. 

Sure it killed him, harmed him, but that was just him. And you can forge neither shield nor sword without pulverising the Hell out of it first. All Danny did was polish and refine what it gifted him. In return, he protects the border, served his duty, fed his Obsession. The romantic in him would like to say it was in noble return for his power, but the more realistic part of himself knew it was based in a level of selfishness. To be a hero, to feel good inside, to leave an impact. But at its absolute core? In its most raw form? It was to stop death in the purest sense of the word. To stop anyone from ceasing to exist unjustly. Human or ghost. Life and death. They were meant to exist in a dance. He knew this, existed in it. The living and the dead meant to simply dance around each other, feign jabs at each other. They shouldn’t cut each other down. You can’t waltz alone, Vlad knew this too, but he willingly ignored it. Just like he chose to deny the fact that ‘halfa’ meant dead just as much as it meant alive. That he wasn’t just a human with ghost powers to abuse. 

Shivering with revulsion as the orange one, his...dad, puts the blurry jar on an empty shelf spot; the shiny blur inside. Life and death, the living and the dead, weren’t meant to chain each other down. No one dances by strangling their partner, that’s called assault. 

That’s why he followed ‘trap and release’. It was only right and the implement of his death helped with that. Yet here it was being used to stop that. It was so _wrong_. He can’t stand for it. 

Danny knows his ecto-field is faring brightly again, easily making him seem twice his size unless you squinted. The effect would be more ‘threatening’ -like a cat bristling their fur- if he was more solid. He’s more solid than he, or a full ghost anyways, should be though. That’ll probably make his...parents think the...boiling was less harmful than it actually was. Good. 

A part of him is deeply satisfied with his vibrant aggressive glow distracting the two enough to step away from the portal, get the Hell away from his grave, stop abusing his death. Making them walk over to him, his vision cleared up and defined enough to make out the whites of eyes and teeth again. He wished it hadn’t. A shapeless colour wash was better than peach static with soulless eyes and wide bared teeth; it was hard to distinguish between grins and frowns this way. Open mouth hissing at them -but not making a sound, no way his brutalised throat could handle more spasming without making him flinch- as they stare in at him. He chooses to stare between their faces, no way to keep both their sets of eyes within his line of sight. 

Jack pokes his jar, making it wobble. Danny chooses to not acknowledge him at all, and just continues with his ‘hissing’. Becoming solid enough to effectively push himself to stand up, back pressed into the glass for support but trying to hide that he needs said support. Maddie lifts up his jar just to smack the cap, electrocuting him again. He locks his jaw and bears it, refusing to give any kind of reaction. The stiffness growing in his reconstructing flesh actually helping keep him still to a degree. Even when Maddie drops his jar back down onto Its red circle, It wobbling slightly. The sapping of his ecto-energy starting back up unpleasantly. 

Their eyes leave him and look to each other before his dad walks off to one of the desks. Which desk Danny’s not really sure, it’s rather hard to summon the exact layout of the lab into the forefront of his mind right now. Jack seems to hold something up and tilt his head. Resulting in Maddie straightening slightly and snapping her head back around quickly to him. A predator mentally zeroing in on their primary prey. Regardless, Danny maintains his resolve to not flinch or shrink away. Even if he can vaguely see the shaking of the other jars around, whether they were trying to warn him or draw attention away from him, he couldn’t be sure. He’s just glad he got the hunters away from their ‘new catch’, whoever they were. 

Danny sliding down the glass to sit crosslegged with slight apathetic acceptance, as she takes up his jar and tosses It down on one of the tables. Watching her pick up a thick syringe that looks like it’s filled with a gel of some kind. He pushes himself back up the glass enough to be able to move if need be when she opens the lid's hole again; wasting little time slipping the blunt end of the syringe inside. No way is he letting that get near him. Scrunching up his eyebrows in confusion as she just slowly lowers it to almost gently place the gel -it would be extremely naive to hope it’s just jello- on the glass bottom. 

Glancing between the droplet of gel to his mom’s goggle covered eyes a few times, tensely waiting for something to happen. While she leans back in her chair and seems to sigh before giving Jack a curt nod and closing the hole. Danny is seriously worried when she uses a pole clamp to pick up his jar extremely gingerly and places him into a blast chamber. Alright, whatever this stuff is, it absolutely is explosive. And considering how haphazardly his dad handles many explosive things, this stuff must be far far more dangerous than even Jack is willing to disregard. Which is more than a little bit concerning. But why would _blowing him up_ be an even remotely interesting ‘experiment’? He’s been blown up before, they know he has, he’ll just snap back together; even if it were anti-ecto or stuffed with ectoranium. 

Danny frowns and basically has to start hopping sloppily around the jar as his mom starts tilting his jar around using the pole clamp, she’s obviously making a point to do it slowly and smoothly. She wants it to touch him, which means he _does not_ want it to touch him. Even if it’s bound to happen eventually, at least dragging this out will keep them occupied for longer. Though he makes a point to jump around as gently as possible, obviously jarring the...jar was also a bad idea. His less than solid state both helps and hurts his ability to avoid the gel. 

Eventually Maddie seems to lose her patience -which he expected honestly- and violently shakes his jar. Resulting in the gel stuff sticking to everything, he’s positive some even got in between his ‘skin’ and ‘jumpsuit’. Arguably both were ‘skin’ since the jumpsuit was made out of his ectoplasm, but technicalities. The first thing he notes is just how much it smells like oranges, detergent and... _gasoline_. He doesn’t get to contemplate the implications of that as not even seconds pass before everything is fire. 

The glass walls, his jumpsuit, every strand of hair, and even his eyelashes (thank everything he blinked) instantly crawling with angry super-heated flames. Far surpassing the heat from, hours? minutes? seconds? he doesn’t really know, ago within seconds. His abused Core had absolutely less than zero chance of keeping up. But at the very least being on fire wasn’t a new one for him, just not _this badly._

Frantically patting at the flames to find they just _will not go out._ This stuff was very firmly stuck to him, the only thing getting this off was it being used up. And that’s enough for him to figure out that this is freaking napalm, his parents specialised self-made (definitely illegal) napalm. It’s so hot that he doesn’t even feel the pain for a second, instead feeling dizzying from the noxious fumes first. He tries to focus on the dizziness when his mind registers the _burning_. His ectoplamsically liquified organs and bones instantly converting to steam and smoke, evaporating right through his porous flesh. While the more solid ectoplasm making up his flesh dries and crisps, tearing off him as it’s devoured by flames; liquid ectoplasm seeping through the forming cracks. His ectoplasm rapidly starting to clot, with his body attempting to convert the ectoplasm to blood as a last resort, but that instantly starts clotting up too from the heat; making moving functionally impossible. All of him was ectoplasm, so all of him was clotting. It was like becoming a rock, trapped inside himself and only able to bake in flames. The ectoplasm that hadn’t evaporated or clotted, shrivelling up painfully. Making him want to curl into himself, yet unable to. Instead standing stiff with his back against the glass, his only movements being slight twitching. He can feel the systems of his Core and heart shutting down, unable to flow, create, or convert anything inside him. While the air becomes suffocatingly hot. It’s a dry heat, rather than the previous moist heat, which is so so much worse; but also much more familiar. 

He puts all the effort he can into glaring at his parents, make sure they watch as his eyes boil and steam up out of their sockets for the second time today. If it even was the same day anymore. But before he loses his sight entirely he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the blast chambers slightly reflective surface, though his reflection is severely warped by his jars glass. All the colour and texture had been cooked right off of him, leaving him a strange crispy yet gooey green vaguely person-shaped thing coated in flames. A bitter petty part of himself hopes this image of him will haunt his ‘parents’ nightmares as much as it likely will his. 

It won’t, because they don’t care. 

This goes on for what must have been hours, the flames consuming and lick all over him. He could probably fuel this forever, he hopes that’s an exaggeration. His body doing its best to try and cycle between gas, liquid and solid in attempts to lessen the damage, to alternate between different kinds of pain. It does little to help him, largely because his body can barely change states at all even without the injuries. He knows based on texture alone that there is human blood inside of and leaking out of him slightly right now. Maybe they won’t notice, maybe they won’t get that clue about _why_ he was different. The flames engulfing the whole of him still actually makes that hope plausible. And even if they did find and sample the blood, the fire would have obliterated any DNA. Rendering it functionally useless and completely unable to be matched up with him. Possibly even unable to be identified as human blood at all. He’s not sure on that last one, he’s never _lit his blood on fire_ to check, 

By the time the flames go out, he’s shrivelled and crispy. His mind a blanket of empty numb thoughtless pain, so he doesn’t have the ability or awareness to really ponder over why his mom moves his jar with the pole grabby thing still or why she still moves him with careful grace -like he’ll shatter if she doesn’t- back to his place on the wall. 

Only vaguely noticing her sticking in some stick thing and poking at his left arm, which disintegrates to green flakey dust. 


	4. Silver Sharp 'Friends'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, surprise this is not a dissection chapter. Shocking I know.  
> I decided that just wasn't creative enough.

Skulker isn’t sure whether to be pleased or bothered by the _maladukes_ -he prefers to use the old term for ghost hunters because, in his eyes, ghost ‘hunters’ were not worthy of the title ‘hunter’- placing him on a shelf where he has a perfect line of sight of Phantom. On one hand, this was excellent data on his favourite prey. How he reacted to things, what would work and what wouldn’t. How his unique rare physiology would adapt and compensate. On the other hand, this was probably the most unsportsmanlike thing he’s ever seen. As a hunter, you either release, tag, or kill what you catch. There was no world in which torture for tortures sake -what other reason could there be for cooking someone?- was remotely okay. Yes hurting your prey was part of the game, part of the fun, but only so long as they could fight back or flee. He personally preferred when they fought back, which is why he still goes after Phantom at this point; he’s well aware he’s never honestly going to catch the whelp prolongedly. 

But looking at Phantom’s still form -honestly hoping he was asleep- as ectoplasm bubbles in his empty eye sockets, working to reform his eyes but still clearly a little too hot. Skulker is not impressed, and if the _maladukes_ were doing that to him, who knows what they’ll do to the rest of them. Skulker knows damn well he himself would not have survived that burning. His metal suit trapping and increasing the heat like an oven. And he could tell that fire was _not normal_ , it was definitely too hot -he could feel the heat through both the bomb containment box _and_ his glass jar- and it also burned far too long; especially since it was burning ectoplasm. A substance that absolutely would have liquified for self-defence and was a liquid in its most basic form. It wasn’t even a flammable liquid, though it could be made into fire. The liquid of Phantom’s ectoplasm should have put out the fire; so logically that fire could possibly burn underwater. He was a little impressed actually. 

At first, he had wondered why Phantom didn’t just create some ecto-flames, ghost fire was far hotter and strong than any other kind after all. It would have overwhelmed and devoured the other flames, regardless of its unusual properties. But it hadn’t taken Skulker long to note that not only could he not phase through this glass, he couldn’t even activate his intangibility. Meaning Phantom could do nothing, which only made him more disgusted with the _maladukes_. Absolutely no honour. 

But in a way, Skulker would have to thank Phantom, and the _maladukes_ , all the noise those two made torturing him allowed for Skulker to walk around and test things out, without all the clanging of his metal on glass drawing their attention. Skulker smirks, or notice him testing out all the functions of his suit. After today, no one would _dare_ mock him for enhancing himself unnaturally again. They would see the genius in it. And maybe Phantom would let him make something for him. That would make a splendid deathday present. And then they could do battle armour to armour! Blade to blade! A truly worthy and interesting hunt! Especially with how resourceful the ghost child was. Give him a pie and he can blow up entire prisons. 

Skulker looks away from the green burnt Phantom -his shrivelled state really showing that he was rather underweight actually- and glancing at the _maladukes_ staring at Phantom, ‘examining’ him. He would say that they seemed emotionless enough to make Technus proud but one, Technus would not be proud of someone being emotionless over this, and two, Skulker could read that the two were actually annoyed with Phantom. Annoyed and interested. Skulker knew it was because of Phantom being an ever so rare halfa, that they focused on and were interested in Phantom for the same reasons he himself was. Having something in common with _maladukes_ disgusted Skulker a fair bit. Especially when those two were Phantom’s makers. 

Not only did they give him life, but they also made the instrument of his death. They forced life upon him and then gave him death on a silver platter. Not many ghosts knew what exactly killed the boy. Skulker did; and he firmly kept it to himself. Any ghost worth their ectoplasm would. It was a ghosts choice, if they could help it and it wasn’t obvious, to tell others of their demise. For a ghost to gossip of another ghosts death? Disgusting. 

Seeing the _maladukes_ turn away from Phantom, Skulker slinks to the back of his jar and pulls his ecto-field into his actual body, winking out the glow of his suit and hiding his ecto-energy from the red circle. Effectively making his jar seem empty to the foolish _maladukes_. As a hunter, one must also know how to hide from their prey...and bigger predators. To flee, to avoid detection, or to bide their time before they strike. 

Phantom was both good and horrible at that. But amongst ghosts, he was the ‘predator to beat’ usually. Hiding wasn’t necessary. Though with humans he always refused to strike or actually run away by relocating. 

Shaking his head Skulker begins to inspect the lid of his jar, those _maladukes_ and Phantom had given him some valuable information. Now all he had to do was get that hole opened somehow...

* * *

Danny lolls his head to the side, not thinking much of the weird cracky flakey feeling around his neck. Bending his knees to slide down the glass and sit down, his legs feeling like every single ounce of them have been pulled taught and like they’ll never not feel stiff ever again. Keening slightly through his teeth, making his throat crack more and collapse in on itself a bit, as he slowly moves his head to look at his left shoulder. Feeling his healing factor doing its magic to a concerning degree. The damage must be pretty bad there, 

Blinking a bit shocked but also weirdly unaffected that his arm’s just... _missing_. Flicking his eyes downward enough to spot the slightly green but largely him-coloured flakes sprinkling the jar bottom. Moving his head back forward to watch more flakes shed onto the glass. That was...weird. He’s never been flakey before. The...arm’s more concerning though, hopefully. So he glances his eyes around -though makes a point to move as little as possible, since the flaking can’t be good- to see if he can spot his missing limb. 

Losing a limb isn’t really new for him but he’s always been able to reattach it within moments at most. He has no clue how long he’s been mentally checked out or if he even mentally checked out at all. His brain might have just blocked the memory instantaneously, he wouldn’t blame it for that. 

Frowning a little when he spots nothing other than ectoplasm smears and flakes. So he’s got a few options here, it dissolved into ectoplasmic goop, they took it from him, or it flaked apart. Looking around the glass he’s sitting on more, well, based on the larger pile of flakes on his left side it probably flaked apart. His arm much more literally dissolved. He wheezes slightly, careful not to make any sounds, he didn’t even know you could do that to ectoplasm. Would that just destroy a ghost? Based on how the flakes were not turning into ectoplasmic goop or reforming in any way, he thinks the answer is ‘yes’. 

Swallowing a bit harshly, did that mean the spots on him that felt all flakey were dissolving? Keening a little again and lolling his head around to look at the others. He needed to know if the rest were okay. Both to distract himself and make sure no one else was hurt. Everyone else looked more or less fine, it was obvious that a few had definitely had stuff done to them. There was quite a few more with the needles or very gooey. But no one was too seriously worse than they previously were. There’s a few whose glows are so very dim that he’s worried about. He’s sure he won’t be able to forgive his ‘parents’ if they force him to watch any ghosts slowly fade from torture right in front of him. 

His attention getting drawn to one of the ghosts closer to him though a bit above him. They were one of the taller ghosts, skinny and red-skinned, if memory serves him their name’s Atmos. Atmos is staring down at him with their hands on the glass of their jars and face pressed up against it. Danny has a feeling they’re more curious than worried, for a ghost that’s pretty expected and he’d rather not worry them. Flicking his eyes around at the jars again, _a lot_ , heck, most, ghosts were watching him. He’s pretty sure they hadn’t all been focused on him a little bit ago, making him a little weirded out that he couldn’t feel their eyes on him currently. That ghostly instinct was rather important, even if it absolutely made his paranoia worse. But it was a blessing when he needed to transform, knowing explicitly if anyone was looking at him. 

Now he’s wondering if maybe they could feel his keening, even if they couldn’t hear it. He doesn’t want to worry them, so he’ll try to not do that. Even if he might be dissolving to full death or destruction or something. Shifting and doing his best to smile around at them, it’s pretty obvious he either failed at smiling or no one believes the smile. Danny’s attention getting grabbed by Atmos again as they slam their hands on their jar hard enough to wobble it. Danny raising an eyebrow at them and forcing down another keen. Watching them write backwards -obviously so he could actually read it, he’d be impressed with how quickly they can write like that if he was mentally awake/aware enough- ‘you’ll heal, don’t worry’, then adding with a wide toothy grin, ‘what’s that feel like though?’. 

Danny lifts up his right hand and flips them off, but if he managing to smile it probably looks much more genuine now. He’s pretty sure Atmos is one of the older ghosts, and the lack of being bothered by the situation definitely hints at that. Older ghosts tend to have a ‘been there done that’ approach to being captured or injured. Which is why many of the younger ghosts and those who haven’t heard of him yet often thought he was a much older ghost than he was. That was both funny and ridiculously depressing. Kept the older ghosts from scoffing at him though. Except for Vlad anyway.

Danny moves to rest his arm on his knees, staring at it a bit. Ancients he looked skinny, his muscles must have dissolved or something; though he can literally see his natural bulk reforming under the shrivelled jumpsuit. It’s a fair bit more than just slightly disgusting. He’s honestly glad he threw up before all of this now, that was not something he wanted to add to his jar. Though once he’s human again he’s going to be _starving_. Especially since he doesn’t know just how long it’s been. 

Which gets him down another mental path. Were Sam and Tuck looking for him? Worried about him? Had they come over? He knew they had little regard for legalities, they would absolutely break into places or abduct someone for him. They knew he was supposed to be back by now. So did his parents. Were _they_ worried about him? Had they even noticed Danny ‘Fenton’ wasn’t home yet? Did they even remember he was supposed to be home by now? He’d hope the answers would be ‘yes’ but realistically it was ‘no’ or ‘not really’. A lot of the time they only seemed to notice him when he was ‘messing up’. Even then they usually just regarded him with resigned disappointment. If Vlad wasn’t nuts and villainous, they probably wouldn’t see him ever again. Though he’s not sure how in the Zone he’d live in a mansion. He’s not sure how Vlad is comfortable with living somewhere so ridiculously massive even by human-sized standards. 

Picking absently at some flaking on his knees, probably not a good idea but he needs distractions. Feeling himself healing on such a massive level was very uncomfortable, but at least it was numbing the pain drastically. And at least the flaking was him-coloured, black and white, probably tan on his face; instead of green, like the pile that he’s pretty sure used to be his arm. The flaking being him-coloured probably means he was indeed healed up quite a bit, he’s pretty sure he was pure green some time ago. 

Tilting his head at his glow flaring suddenly and a bunch of the flaking snapping to become smoothed, if he felt better he probably would have jumped, startled, by that. Scrunching his eyebrows slightly and deciding to test things out, standing up slowly while using the glass for support. His legs are shaking and his upper half is definitely still flaking. His body must have prioritised his legs, makes sense, he needed them to move around right now. His arms and throat -which is probably insanely damaged by this point- weren’t really that useful right now. 

Taking a few steps and nodding slightly when he doesn’t just collapse but not leaving the support of the glass. Choosing to walk around to get a better look at the rest of the jars, vaguely remembering his ‘parents’ catching another ghosts. Well the shiny glowing thing was probably a ghost anyway, was kinda hard to tell. Apparently everyone can tell what, or more so who, he’s looking for and subtly nod or gesture toward one of the dark jars up high. Which just confuses him, if it was dark that meant their glow had faded. No way his parents would have ‘used up’ a ‘specimen’ that quickly. But everyone trying to be subtle must mean something is going on. Good. Maybe whoever has some kind of plan. He shouldn’t press, he knows there are cameras down here normally. Sure he messed with them frequently but it’s entirely possible they’ve repaired them again. Pressing wasn’t worth possibly ruining a plan. 

So he just nods a bit and goes to lay down, mentally checking out for a while; with the two of them not here, no one's really going to get hurt. And hey, at least the red circle thing was off right now. Small mercies. 

* * *

Danny blinks away the glaze to his eyes, checking out like that was the closest he could come to ‘sleeping’ while in his ghost form. Going to push himself up with his elbows and nearly losing his balance from there only being one elbow to prop himself up with. Right. The whole ‘dissolved’ problem. Sitting up fully and deciding to look it over, it had reformed a little; not much, just a little. Not surprising, the Hell that was probably his insides was much more pressing. And his head. Especially his eyes. And there’s the fact that he definitely had a hole in his throat earlier. Touching at it gingerly and flaking off bits of dried ectoplasm. Least it just looks to be what he’s used to seeing come off of wounds he didn’t have time to clean up before passing out in bed. No weird him-coloured flakes. And... flexing his fingers, the stiffness seemed more or less gone. 

Picking off bits of crusted ectoplasm from his legs, a lot of it isn’t even his own. He had sort of forgotten to be horrified by the girls' ectoplasm pooled everywhere in lieu of his own getting splattered everywhere. In a way, them sticking him in this one was better for him. Her ectoplasm largely eventually evaporating into free-floating ectoplasm that his body/Core could absorb and feed off of. Another way his ‘parents’ inadvertently technically helped him that they wouldn’t be happy about; making him grin out of spite slightly. 

Turning his head to the lab stairs as the lights flicker on, jerking slightly from the sapping of his ectoplasm starting up again. His ecto-energy levels fluctuating was an everyday thing, fluctuating more than what most ghosts put up with, but this felt too unnatural to really be unbothered by. Trying to not pay too much attention to quite a few of the other ghosts abortively groaning only to rub their throats. Obviously just as displeased as him over being used as damn batteries. 

Most of them, him included, walking or scooting back to be closer to the parts of their jars nearest the walls and with the best possible view of the doorway as Maddie comes down and looks around at them before smirking. Everyone probably unsurprised when her eyes settle on Danny’s jar. 

Danny tried to look unbothered and totally one hundred percent fine by raising an eyebrow though baring his teeth a little. She just looks from him to the stairs and back, smiling almost sickly sweet; the glass exaggerating it a fair bit. Then lifting up a much smaller glass jar up to his eye level and thrumming her jumpsuit covered fingernails over it. Danny glancing quickly from her eyes to the jar, seeing that it’s filled with around five tiny blob ghosts in sparkling bright blue ecto-water. Technically they were a subspecies of blob ghosts, Pandora told him they were called SignalShines, even fully formed they were barely the size of the average adult human thumbnail; and that’s when they weren’t curled up. They were helpful little things. SignalShines were to Ghosts kind of like how Remoras were to Sharks. They love to eat Moxowasps and Mungle Berry Fungus, both of which Danny’s glad to have never had a run-in with. He’d rather not have fungus branches start sprouting out of his flesh. 

He has, however, run into these little guys before. Most of the Zone’s ponds had a population of them, and Tuck’s PDA got infested by them once. Apparently they can eat electrical currents too. Danny blinks away the memory and glances at the smaller jar again, his ‘parents’ must have gone into the Zone to get those and they’re all clearly not fully formed; one he’s betting is barely a few days old. SignalShines don’t occur in the living world and can’t survive without constant contact with high concentrations of ecto-energy. Outside of stronger ghosts lairs and ghosts with Cores (there were some ghosts who’d let them stay in their hair or clothes), ecto-water was the only thing with enough ecto-energy to sustain them. 

He has absolutely no idea what she’s going to do with them. Maybe she thinks they’re parasites or something? It wouldn’t be much of a reach to come to that conclusion; and his ‘parents’ were notoriously for coming to false conclusions. 

Both him and Maddie turning their heads to the doorway as Jack bounds down. Jack coming over to join Maddie and talking excitedly with her. Danny easily able to see the distorted ridges of the roof of his mouth as he laughs. Maddie smiling brightly back at Jack. Now that the pair was complete, whatever ‘experiment’ could begin. If all they do is stick SignalShines into his hair, he’s pretty sure many of the other ghosts won’t be able to resist laughing at them. 

He makes a point to just glare at them and maintains his balance as they take his jar and set it down on one of the tables. Jack poking at his jar, probably actively trying to make him lose his balance, while trying to look at his missing arm. Danny silently snarls at Maddie instead of Jack though, as she roughly pinches one of the SignalShines in a pair of tweezers. He doesn’t even have to look around to know others are snarling at her too. There’s no way there wasn’t a few ghosts here who cared for SignalShines like pets. Danny just disliked them being mean and rough on principal. 

Jack’s the one that opens the little hole this time and it’s very obvious he’s not that good at it; considering how much he jerks Danny’s jar around and fumbles with the latch. Danny’s a little surprised when Maddie sticks in a small pair of strange forceps (probably something new she made. She always made the more scary looking medical grade stuff) and seemingly tries to stab him with them; with him obviously scampering out of the way; his freshly reformed skin protesting to all the sudden movement. The forceps? honestly look more like they’re meant to force something open than grab him. It’s debatable. 

His...dad seemingly tries to help by tilting the jar around, the bottom of which is still rather slick with ectoplasm. It’s really only a matter of time before his...mom catches him with whatever they’ve decided to call the metal tool. 

Not even five minutes later and with a clearly annoyed Maddie, Danny’s head gets slammed into the glass with a light clang; the device pining his chest against the glass. Grabbing at the neck of the device, more out of defiance than with any intent to do anything. Forcing himself not to cringe from the typical burn that accompanies all anti-ecto material. Maddie just smirks at him and at the steam coming from both his hand and chest. 

She pushes the device into his chest a bit more, likely just to be mean, before shimmying it up his chest. Normally he’d have enough strength, even down an arm, to hold the device in place and shove it away from him, but his body was so far away from peak condition it wasn’t even funny. 

Her eventually crushing his battered throat a bit with it before shoving the top part into his mouth. Prying his mouth open after getting the bottom part in, effectively holding his mouth open and head against the glass by force. Him only able to weakly grab at it and try to push off the metal with his remaining solid hand. 

Going wide-eyed at her forcing the tweezers with the very tiny SignalShine painfully through the small hole in the lid. Danny knows where this is going now, there’s really only one way it could be going, and he wants nothing to do with it. Ever. As the tweezers slowly move the little guy towards his face.

Danny chips at least two teeth trying to physically bite through the thing in his mouth -which he’s pretty sure is a very tiny dental gag at this point- by the time Maddie seems content to forcefully stuff the SignalShine into his mouth. He can slightly hear her practically growl at him while he uses his tongue to try forcing the SignalShine out. She probably expected this based on her not releasing said ghost from the tweezers yet. 

Danny squinting and paling as a weird silver thing travels down the outside of the dental gag that’s prying his teeth apart; recognising it as a crude form of the muzzle, as it slips and clamps around his face. The thing forcing his mouth to snap shut, and burning him slightly for resisting it, instantly after she removed the dental gag and tweezers from his mouth; moving the dental gag to pin his chest against the glass again. It takes a lot to keep from gagging over feeling and tasting the little SignalShine squirming around in his mouth and over his tongue. 

Going to grab at the muzzle only to be shocked by anti-ecto electricity, feeling the SignalShine violently glitching from the shock; which is more than enough to very firmly discourage him from touching the muzzle. He hates how Maddie smirks down at him when he jerks his hand away from the muzzle. 

What the absolute _Hell_ was the point of this? What even gave them this idea? Did they think bigger ghosts ate smaller ones? Or that this would make him complacent? Or maybe they were just fucking with him... Grimacing again over It pushing his tongue up in an attempt to hide under it, clearly hurting and scared. He tries to pulse his ectoplasm around It for comfort, he hopes the message gets across. 

Jerking from getting a little shock from the muzzle before glaring up at his ‘mom’ as he hears another persons voice for the first time in a while. “You best swallow that unless...”, she trails off and gestures to Jack, who waves a little device with a cruel smirk before tapping it; giving Danny another quick zap. 

Ancients fuck, they seriously wanted him to _eat the SignalShine._ That was...insanely messed up. Jerking from another zap and the SignalShine glitching, while Maddie clears her throat in a form of warning to ‘hurry up’. Danny getting seriously thrown by the SignalShine shifting around to nuzzle the back of his throat and whistling faintly; pretty well giving him ‘permission’. Which is so many kinds of fucked up. Shuddering a bit in response. 

But also...it’s probably good, pure luck, that they’re using him to do this. A halfa. Being... _eaten_ by a normal full ghost would just result in said ghosts internal ectoplasm cannibalising the tiny Coreless ghost. But halfas had human things, human organs, human stomachs. Or at least they could, when they wanted to. And the human digestive tract can do precisely jack shit to ectoplasm. In fact, a normal human stomach would get eaten itself by serious prolonged ectoplasmic contact. His would be fine of course. So...arguably...this wasn’t...technically harmful...for anyone involved. That doesn’t make it any less messed up and horrifying. 

Shifting his legs a little and glaring at his ‘mom’ -Ancients can he even call her that at this point?- while he makes damn sure his stomach is totally solid and reformed, before letting the little guy fly/slide down his throat; no way in the entirety of the Zone was he going to actively swallow. Hell fucking no. 

Glaring harder at _Maddie_ when she smirks at him, obviously seeing the slight change to the shape of his throat from the SignalShine going down. His glare changing to a probably freaked out looking expression at her snagging another one of the SignalShines in her tweezers. Ancients fuck, they were going to force-feed him _all of them_. What the fuck. What the fuck. What the serious _FUCK_. No.

Getting zapped quite painfully from both the muzzle and the jar after he starts kicking and grabbing at the dental gag like a feral animal. Revealing how _not okay with this_ he is, is probably not a good idea, but he doesn’t give a good goddamn. Though he does have enough sense to keep his internal ectoplasm close enough to the SignalShine to support them but not close enough to transfer over any of the anti-ecto electrical shocks. He wouldn’t have to worry about that if this was normal electricity, but of course it wasn’t. Why would it be? Anti-ecto hurt more. Hurting was their bread and butter.

Getting zapped hard enough to destabilise his legs for a second after he managed to hook one foot between his face/muzzle and the dental gag. Which of course made him unable to use his foot to block the dental gag from being able to lock onto the muzzle and force his mouth open again. 

The only blessing of this is _Maddie_ gaining some confidence from the first...’ _trial run_ ’ results in her going much faster with the whole... _shoving a sentient being into his mouth like some kind of disgusting monster_. He doesn’t even think _Dan_ would force-feed a SignalShine to someone. And Danny never even thought he would ever be able to find a possible limit to what that _monster_ would likely be willing to do. 

He’s both surprised and not that each one seems...oddly okay with this. But maybe they understand that his...insides...were much safer than a regular ghosts. Or maybe it was because he was strong, SignalShines were always more attracted to and fond of powerful ghosts. And he’s very very thankful to them for not moving around too much. 

He’s far more thankful that Jack and Maddie only managed to get five as the last SignalShine swims down. Also seriously thankful when Maddie snaps the hole shut and puts him back on his shelf; while he just sits against the glass and glares bloody murder at them. Waiting till they look away from him to curl up and wrap his one arm around his stomach; which honestly isn’t a good idea, making it much more noticeable when they move at all. 

He is not okay. 

This was not okay.

He’d rather be boiled again.

Ancients fuck. 

He shivers. 

* * *

While Danny’s lying curled up on his side, his armless side pressed into the glass bottom to hide the repairing injury. Most of the rest of the ghosts were slowly coming out of various states of shock and disgust. There was no reason to eat another ghost other than to gain power, even that was frowned upon. But even then, that only applied if you ate a ghost with a Core, not a freaking SignalShine. And there was even less of a reason to encourage, none the less force, someone to eat one. Especially Phantom. Everyone well aware of his protective streak and distaste for pointless harm. 

Quite a few ghosts not being able to resist sputtering or muttering in shock and disgust; throats getting assaulted by painful pressure in the process. All of them much more worried about possibly being the two _hunters_ next plaything now. 

And even if Phantom did have something up his sleeve -of course he did, come on, he _always_ did. It wasn’t just dumb luck... right?- he wouldn’t be able to use/do it. No way his body was in good enough shape and that’s not even counting the, uh, unexpected body tenants. The previous keening making that fact extremely obvious. 

Everyone either wincing or acting smug over not being picked, when Brextik is the unfortunate soul who’s jar the blue _hunter_ snatches up. Brextik, for his part, is just very thankful for not looking to be getting anything close to the treatment Phantom got. Why Phantom stayed with these fleshlings he’s not sure, he’d be welcomed with open arms -and a collection the finest weapons and battle opponents, but he digresses- in the Zone. He’d have a lair, a much more suitable one at that, there. The Mad Kings castle was rightfully his after all. 

Brextik runs his claws across the bottom of the glass and stays on all fours as the blue one put his jar down. Staring at him with what’s likely an analytical gaze that’s largely apathetic; the goggles and distortions make it hard to tell, he hardly cares about that though. The stupid fleshlings can shape their faces however they want, it’s no matter to him. 

Watching the orange one place what looks like homemade wine on the table, letting the clearly more ‘gentle’ of the two open it. Brextik squinting slightly, there appeared to be a herb bundle in the bottom of the bottle. Digging his claws into the glass slightly at recognising the black leaves and red petals with a faint purple glow; accompanied by some roots that looked like white carrots. _Blood Blossoms and Hemlock._

Brextik wasn’t a young ghost, not by any means. He’s seen many things and back in his youth poisons were a well-loved method of inflicting suffering. For humans and ghosts alike. Herbs and plants weren’t surprising to see, unpleasant but at least he knew what to expect to a degree. What does rise his curiosities was that it was these two using herbs. He had been under the impression these _hunters_ fell into the category of ‘modern’ technological hunters. Something so old school seems out of place. But maybe they simply seek out whatever causes the most harm. How was Phantom even related to these two? 

Popping his feet up onto the side of the glass and standing on his hands, his arms were much longer than his legs; it was always best to sacrifice them for the sake of the rest of him. While the blue _hunter_ opens the hole that these lids apparently have. Making a point to watch closely, any information was good information. Phantom couldn’t safely communicate anything really to the rest of them due to the _hunters_ being so focused on him. The upside to that was the rest of them going much more unnoticed. 

Sniffing faintly as the blue one puts a bit of cheesecloth over the opening before pouring in the liquid. So she didn’t want the herbs falling in...why? He’ll give these two fleshlings points for being far more creative than the vast majority of _hunters_ he’s had the displeasure of running into over the centuries. The scents confirming his suspicions on the herbs and the liquid is definitely a wine, but not made of grapes or honey. Nightshade berries with a hint of arsenic. It’s been a long time since people used arsenic to improve the flavours of wine, he rather missed those days; the wine really did taste better that way. These two had done their research. The dose of nostalgia is quite pleasant even while the burning to his hands is not. 

His outer ectoplasm layers twitching before even the ectoplasm that builds up his simple tunic becomes completely paralyzed. Rendering him unable to truly move, not that he would anyway. He can also feel that his ectoplasm is attempting to tremble, effectively making the paralytic effect excruciatingly painful. Hissing through his teeth and ignoring the pressure to his throat. The pulsing of his Core speeding up and heating him past what is healthy or comfortable. 

Thank you hemlock.

His red skin darkening from a bright cherry to a dark ruby and much of his thicker internal ectoplasm sloshing in a nauseating fashion; making him regret his position slightly (now that, that he can blame on the arsenic). But the burning tingle surrounding his arms keeps him from truly regretting any of his choices. 

Though this burning, it did not feel typical of blood blossoms, it was similar but not quite right. And the lights becoming progressively more unpleasantly bright, strange shapes pulsing and floating around like he’s stared into the sun too long. This...ah. It’s the belladonna. The succulent fruit of nightshade. Something of a delicacy to ghosts, the probable hallucinations giving it away; it made for truly splendid wine. Normally. But somehow. Somehow it seems they used the blood blossoms to alter everything else. Polluted poisons to be truly nefarious to both the living and dead. 

If a human drank this they would be in for an incredibly bad time. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about vomiting or becoming comatose. Though that might prove to not be something for the better. 

Feeling rashes and boiling to his arms, internals making aborted attempts at seizing, his temperature becoming highly feverish, and his vision pulsating angrily with a kaleidoscope of walking trees and blurring between too bright white and a dark void. 

The ectoplasm inside his arms spasming violently and reacting with his paralysis promptly making the limbs explode. The rest of him face planting into the poison wine and the glass bottom. His familiarity with this sort of situation is really all that keeps him from getting any of it in his mouth, nose, or ears. Promptly using his probably short-lived ability to move, to sit up out of the wine and lean against the glass. Completely turning his back on the _hunters_ as to block them from truly documenting his reactions or deriving any pleasure from his suffering. Plus, turning your back on a predatory always served to insult them. And if he was going to do anything, it was going to be something causing offence. 

Ignoring the slight shaking of his body and making a damn point of crossing his legs and liquid arms. Refusing to acknowledge the rashes and burning coating his legs now. His Core beginning to functionally boil him makes that a little easier to do; also makes it impossible not to keen a little. 

That act of turning away from the couple results in locking eyes with Phantom, blurry as his vision is Phantom was always so easy to recognise. The poor child’s eyes were practically vibrating with worry and fear. Brextik hardly knew the strange half-ghost, but he knew enough. Forcing a soft smile in his direction even with ectoplasm leaking down his own cheeks and the sides of his head. The so-named ‘halfas’ might not have been a thing in his young years but they were ghosts all the same. And Phantom’s Obsession was so painfully obvious, he truly needed to do something about that. Though Brextik understands, Phantom’s lair was something of a battleground based on the gossip. That would make any ghost more protective; especially one with a protective Obsession. The unfortunate downfall of that is how these situations served to harm him so much more than others. Those _hunters_ certainly don’t know they’re causing pain in that way. 

Phantom grimaces slightly back but gives an ‘encouraging’ smile after a second. Ah, Brextik doesn’t care for that. Twitching again and ignoring the steam coming off his skin. Everything burned yes and he knew not if anything he was seeing was actually real; but he had something to do now. Looking to make a point before he lost the fight with his muscles, he sends a soft smile to the monochromatic ghost. 

Brextik survived so long not by strength but by will and avoidance. That’s worked for him for quite a long time, even when he did get caught. So the little one aught not feel bad or worry over him. He’s been comfortable for a few years now, his fading was rather expected; not like this of course. He’s perfectly content to go, but if he can cause the _hunters_ a little bit of frustration and chaos -while also throwing some humour at Phantom, the child’s puns were _infamous_ \- while he goes, then he damn well will. 

So he throws Phantom a wink past the shaking flesh of his face and half lays down lazily in the ‘wine’, turning to the two _hunters_ in the process. Jerkily moving a hand to cup up some ‘wine’ and drinking it with a wily smirk. Grinning smugly and utterly ignoring the ectoplasm bubbling out of his mouth when the blue one snarls at him and slams his jars lid, electrocuting him; not that he really feels it. If he’s gonna fade, he gonna fade spitefully. 

He winks at her, earning a deep frown from the overgrown orange _hunter_ , as his teeth slide down his face. Landing wetly in bubbling ectoplasm and ‘wine’. Though feeling his ectoplasm skitter and Core practically hiss over Phantom keening again. No ghost liked another being reduced to keening, even when they were keening themselves. Especially not child ghosts. And from strong ghosts it was so unnerving, a warning of something truly dangerous being nearby and capable of serious harm. Of the ghosts here, Phantom was easily the strongest. Establishing him as the Enduring Tsar, the one most likely to survive emergency situations and thus the ‘protector’, for the others. For him to hurt meant for them far worse, what would make him keen would make the weaker and youngest of them fade. 

Brextik can’t really do anything about it, neither calm Phantom nor heal himself. He’s guessing he’s starting to run out of ectoplasm. He’s running out of a lot of things at this point. He never thought he would. Fading was usually a simple nice calm thing. _Hunters_ destroyed that, he think that makes them deserving of the hate and violence ghosts throw at them, the fleshlings were bigger but they _were not_ stronger. That’s why fleshlings needed and did things like this. They hated being the weaker, hated how it harms their ‘bigger is better’ mindset. Every ghost found it so pathetic how fleshlings belittled and devalued the smallest of their living kind. While ghosts valued the smallest of theirs. Wisps were precious. SignalShines were precious. Blebs were precious. _Children_ were precious. But to the fleshlings, pets and children were nothing but things to own and use to make themselves look good. It was disgusting. And yet they wondered why ghosts would whisk away child fleshlings so frequently. He’s personally proud to have been one of such Whisked Children way back when. 

His guardian long faded now, though he wonders if he’ll see her again. Leeblauche had been sweet, always. The EverWorld, the land of true death, must have been made sweeter when she arrived. So there must be some sweetness for him there. 

All he’s got here now is glass walls. The glass walls are better than the faces, the distorted warped faces. Or the walls of blue or orange. The tainted wine is a nice companion really. She always loved her wine, something he’s glad he learned from her.

She had been so proud. 

Using the last of his strength to splash up some of the wine through the hole, she’d be proud now that his final act was functionally throwing a glass of wine at someone. He swears he hears her throw back her head and cackle...

* * *

Skulker grins maliciously at the blue _maladuke_ throwing her goggles off across the room, the tainted ‘wine’ on them dangerously close to her face. Watching her shake the faded ghosts jar before throwing it with a sneer at the trash can. They weren’t even going to use what they killed. Disgusting. 

He uses the twos distraction to fiddle with where he’s figured out the hole latch is. Using his suits jets to hold him near it in the air, his real bodies small hands making easy work of slipping between the groves and nicks in the glass and lid. His malicious grin growing as the latch slides open, quickly setting his suit to simply go lay against one side of the jar after detaching a mini blaster from it. Out of sight and out of mind. Those _maladukes_ would merely think he faded but weirdly. That might actually take some heat off of Phantom actually. So as an afterthought he gets his suit to land noisily rather than silently; while he hops off the lid onto the shelf, quickly blinking out of visible sight. He’d still have to wait a bit for his gravity nullification to recover, but, cocking his blaster, he was nothing if not highly resourceful. 


	5. Run, Little Ghost. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The littlest ghost gets to try saving the day

Danny stares at the trash can, the faint glow of ectoplasm slowly fading. Everything else in his vision is basically nothing but blurry black nothing. Hardly noticing the SignalShines rolling and rubbing against his stomach lining in a strange attempt at soothing him, having easily noticed his distress. Or hardly noticing the flash of a tiny ecto-beam.

What does eventually make him mentally and physically jerk out of his disturbed stillness -pressed up against the glass growing streaky from tears and frosting ever so slightly from his metaphorically crying Core- as some kind of metal arm comes out of and down from the ceiling and smashes into the shelving. Making the wall and shelves shake violently and the jars exploding glass everywhere. The glass flying around so massively that it completely blocks his line of sight of the trashcan and lab tables.

Snapping out of his pained daze and scurrying away, bumping his back against the part of the jar nearest the wall. Finally noticing Jack rushing to Maddie, whose cupping her eyes; blood spilling over the sides of her fingers. Even with everything that’s happened Danny can’t help but feel concerned and worried, standing up to get a slightly better look but not daring to move around much. Swallowing down bile from the SignalShines protesting at the sudden movement and him functionally tossing them around a little. 

Gaping at at least a third of the captured ghosts going about standing up, freed from their jar prisons; while _Skulker_ (minus his suit) -that’s who/what the shiny thing they caught was!- floats in the air taunting Jack and Maddie. Maddie attempting to blindly swat at him while Jack ‘attempts’ at inspecting her eyes. 

Normally Jack was the overreactor, but Maddie’s the one swiping wildly at the air. Not standing a chance at actually hitting the barely pinky-nail sized ghost; who keeps throwing chunks of glass at the duo. 

Danny smiles slightly at the other ghosts running around throwing bits of glass at Jack and Maddie while helping those badly damaged to the stairs. The stronger/best off ghosts rapidly moving to claw at and bite at their jumpsuits, taking up scalpels and scissors as swords and javelins. 

It’s complete chaos of glass, metal, shrieking growling ghosts, and the hunters flailing and tying to smack at the ghosts like a hoard of fire ants. And ghosts were things of chaos, it empowered and embolden them greatly; even getting him a bit drunk on it, healing him some. 

Following Skulker with his eyes as he flies over to his jar. Skulker lands on the shelf and shakes his head at Danny; who’s still sans one arm, caked in crusted ectoplasm and a little blood, in a shredded and crispy bubbly looking jumpsuit, peppered with burns, unpleasantly skinny excluding the slightly distended stomach, and wearing a muzzle. Skulker wasting little time in smashing his jar with a very large wrench. 

“Whelp, have I ever told you your makers are incredibly messed up?”. 

On any other day, Danny would have flipped him off for that. Instead he just shrugs before holding his one hand up and letting Skulker land on it. Him moving to detach Danny’s muzzle over the sounds of the lab shooting out metal arms effectively smashing the rest of the glasses open; obviously Skulker hijacked the labs' electronic systems. 

Skulker flies back as the muzzle falls and clangs loudly on the shelf, bits of broken glass falling off the shelf to the lab floor. “Get out of here Phantom. We got this. Läuftee’s here and you know his knack for rioting”, huffing at Phantom glancing worriedly at the ghosts on the floor, guess he needed better convincing or to feel useful, “go get the weakened brats away from here. That stupid thermos of yours”. 

Danny glances at a wall, speaking and cringing over how ragged his voice sounds, “it’s in the wall”, cutting himself off from grumbling about how Skulker knows Danny can’t really use the thing in ghost form; considering the thing’s human size. 

Skulker rolls his eyes, “then be creative, Phantom”, and flies back to the _maladukes_ , gladly and eagerly making one of Phantom’s training hoops pop out and punch the orange one in the face. 

Danny stared for only a few seconds before scrambling down, ignoring the lingering stiffness and subsiding pain. Jumping down onto one of the tables, wincing and rolling across it from the hard impact. Picking up his running speed as Maddie shouts, “JACK! PHANTOM!”; he doesn’t have to look to know she’s pointing at him. 

Danny knocking down whatever he can grab and jumping away from his d- _Jack’s_ hands; before getting practically flung off the table as Jack gets tripped by something wrapped around his ankles, making everything that isn’t bolted to the floor bounce up off the floor from Jack impacting said floor. 

Danny scrambling to stand up from the floor, wrapping his arm around his stomach over a few of the SignalShines crying out and squirming from the impact. Unnecessarily breathing out heavily before running over to the stairs. Jumping up the first step and immediately moving to help the ghosts who couldn’t jump, or were just too short, up. Glancing at the mess of ghosts pretty well crawling over and cutting up his par- _Jack and Maddie_ , Danny locking eyes with the nearest fighter and speaking barely above a whisper, “don’t...kill them. _Please_ ”. 

Turning back to the stairs and pushing everything out of his head, he had work to do. 

* * *

Kitty shrieks bloody murder as she jabs a headphone jack into the orange _hunters'_ kneecap, her hair is a goddamn mess and her makeup is smeared all over her face but she’s perfectly fine getting messy with these bastards blood. 

Throwing a teary-eyed smile at Phantom practically dragging two ghosts up the third step. Before snatching up one of the ectoplasm vials he had knocked to the ground. That ‘woman’ -who had no place being the same gender as her- deserved to get what she served. Blood for blood, eye for an eye, was _absolutely_ just and the standard with ghosts; and Phantom was a ghost. 

How _dare_ they hurt someone who treated her so good, if she didn’t have Johnny she would gladly rest in Phantom’s arms. Many ghosts crushed on him, it was just so painful to love him that no one dared. He was so _damaged_ and his existence was so dangerous. How _dare_ his makers add to that so. 

After this, she absolutely was going to team up with whoever she can to put in a request to the Observants. Surely the _hunters'_ actions broke not only the Seals but the Law Of Ages as well. They were going to be punished, but Phantom deserved reparations as well. For _everything_. Them being humans be damned. 

Stabbing the vial into the blue _hunters_ mouth like it was a sword, the _hunter_ snarls at her and the rest of the ghosts. While twenty-odd others knock over a table onto the larger _hunter_. Grinning as Lily open mouth hisses with her cheeks colouring a glowing purple, claws sparking with ecto-flames; their ecto-energy was recovering. 

Seconds later grinning maliciously right into the blue _hunters_ eye as the sound of an ecto-blast rings out followed by the orange _hunters'_ yelp. 

* * *

Danny refuses to look behind himself as he gets the last of the others into the kitchen. Jack and Maddie had smiled and laughed at all of their yelps and cries, he shouldn’t care or hurt over them yelping. But he does. How couldn’t he? 

A blue ghost -Ancients he always feels bad when he doesn’t know or remember someone’s name- squeezing his arm in an obvious attempt at comforting him; even with them be covered in burns worse than him. It was times like these he really noticed just how much faster he healed than most ghosts; it was partly because of power level -though he tried not to think about how strong he really was- and partly because of support from his human half. 

Shivering from his ecto-energy perking up slightly. Most of it would go to healing faster, so using it for anything else would have to be put on hold. Looking around and nodding at the rest of the ghosts. Clearing his throat to try and make his voice sound less damaged, “we need to get past the door before our ecto-fields regain enough strength for the house's defences to go off against us! Help carry each other as much as possible!”. 

Normally any self-respecting ghost would scoff at him for implying they needed to help each other simply to walk or leave a building, but this was far from typical circumstances. Meaning everyone quickly follows his orders and lead, obviously pointedly not commenting on him using the kitchen walls to steady himself. While he pointedly doesn’t think about how ghosts seemed to so often look to him for leadership; all of Tuck’s jokes about him being ‘totally rightfully a king now’ making him wince. He can’t handle that. He can barely handle his current load. He wished someone else would take the lead. He wished ghosts didn’t look to him in times of need. He wished ClockWork wouldn’t look at him like that every time he ranted about this. More than anything, he wished he didn't need to take the lead at all. 

It takes practically all of them to yank the door open, many falling over in the process. Having to quickly grab each other to bolt out as the buildings alarms start going off. Danny’s not even surprised that the traffic outside feels jarringly loud after so long in silence, or that the cars start freaking out and speeding off away from the house at spotting a literal swarm of ghosts pouring out the front door. They had to get out of here before the Red Huntress showed up and started blowing the ground to smithereens. 

Soon probably, everyone was exhausted, in every sense of the word. Him included. The lot of them scurrying into the alleyway next to the house after him as he internally panics slightly. With his ecto-energy ‘waking up’ but still being severely drained, his body will do what it always does when he’s ectoplasmicly exhausted. _Change back human._

Collapsing seconds later, human, in a pile of trash. Glancing around to see if any humans saw him with panicked haste. Many of the ghosts grabbing at his clothing, some probably annoyed, others attempting at at comforting, and others are probably just confused; not everyone knew what Phantom looked like or that _he_ was one of the halfas. He’s never met anyone who didn’t know the name Phantom though, he’s never sure how to feel about that. 

Pushing himself up with his one arm and wheezing a little. The SignalShines were freaking out over the sudden change, though probably grateful for the extra room; while he checks over his arm to make sure the stump -which had just been starting to form an elbow- didn’t start bleeding. Sighing with relief over it being fine and looking down at all the little ghosts. Many of which have just sat or laid down to rest; he’s a little happy to see a few floating slightly. They, and him, needed the rest -he personally _always_ needed the rest- but they couldn’t stay here. 

Looking to the alleyway at the sound of scampering feet and the scent of ectoplasm, seeing pretty well the rest of the previously captured ghosts running/floating towards him. He’s glad it looks like they cleaned themselves off, he’s not sure what he’d do if they were splattered in ectoplasm or...blood. 

Skulker points at him as the two groups converge, “I sacrificed my suit for this whelp, you better appreciate this”.

Danny smiles slightly, “I’ll make you a new one”, pausing and tilting his head before adding, “Tuck will help”. That earning a toothy grin from the exceptionally tiny huntsman ghost. Danny knows Skulker’s just distracting him a bit and keeping him from getting mentally distracted from the situation. 

Pushing himself to stand up and looking around, straining to hear if there’s any hover-board engine around. Most of the ghosts continuing to cling to his clothing, which absolutely likely looks incredibly weird. Now to get everyone back to the Zone, the Fenton Portal is out of the question; going anywhere near _the lab_ is out of the question. He can faintly hear crying, things being angrily smashed, and sweeping from in the house; which he’s firmly trying to block out. They did this to themselves. He _has_ to let them deal with the fallout. They _should_ have to deal with it. Even if the fact that they’re hurting, hurts him. He’s a protector by nature. 

Shaking his head, he’s getting distracted, looking to the group, they’d have to find a natural portal, “can anyone sense portals?”, pausing to wheeze a little, “natural portals?”. Being human again was smacking him with all his human needs. And having solid organs again, they all _burned_ but felt like ice cubes at the same time. 

A pink-skinned ghost in a blue dress lifts up a younger yellow-skinned ghost, while he kneels down and rests his one arm on his knee; letting the child ghost climb onto his hand, who blurts out, “they smell like cotton candy!”. Danny pushing the pain from any pressure on his skin to the back of his mind; being physically heavier as a human always made that worse. 

Danny makes a point to give her a small soft smile -he never smiles wide in human form anymore, as a ghost it was just always creepy to see wide smiles on humans- as he responds, “sounds delicious, think you’re up for helping everyone out?”. He could literally hear his ribs creaking as he breathed, Ancients. 

She hums and mockingly looks around like she’s debating her answer before nodding eagerly, “yuppie!”, spinning around and sniffing at the air before looking back up to him and pointing a bit to the left, “there’s one super-duper off that way. Smells like lots of twees too. Soggy twees”. 

Danny nods, “sounds like the NeverWoods, I know where that is”. This could work, this wasn’t so bad. 

While Reverent props himself up on his elbows and raises an eyebrow at Phantom, “of course you do, this is _your lair”_ , continuing as Phantom rolls his eyes with a slight wince, “but how the Zone are _we_ supposed to get there? In case it’s not obvious, we’re kinda fucking beat up and tired”, Phantom winces again but lifts up his half-formed arm with a slight glare. Reverent rolls his eyes at him, sure Phantom got the shit kicked out of him, what’s new? Walking to wherever was a whole different story for him, one step for him was practically a hundred for them now. The asshole got to have ghosts strength, powers and durability, and human-size at the same time. Reverent knows he’s in the minority in thinking the guy could get fucked. Though everyone agreed the other halfa could get fucked. 

Danny looks around, Reverent had a point, just moving to the alleyway has most of them wiped out. Skulker was practically the only one who was fine, but without his suit he couldn’t do much and was the smallest of the group by a long shot. But Danny himself was also in no shape to really help, there was far too many of them for him to just _carry_ and people would absolutely be able to tell. Plus Danny looked like crap and was missing an arm, someone would stop him even if they didn’t notice the gaggle of ghosts. He himself definitely didn’t have the energy for invisibility and he doubts any of them have enough to cover everyone. Shifting on his knee a little over the SignalShines floating around and prodding at him curiously a little. But that gives him pause, an idea popping into his head. Body manipulation was an ability that came to him extremely easily. Humans and ghosts were impressively adaptable things, making him doubly so. It wouldn’t take much for him to just make pockets in his body, sure he couldn’t do away with organs or anything while human. But fat, muscle, veins he could; heck, that’s how he kept his human form from looking even slightly muscular, as a so-called ‘weak loser nerd’ he can’t appear to have any muscle. Tuck had to change to baggy clothing, while Sam was already extremely fit. He also could ‘move around’ organs if need be. Sure this would mean carting around a bunch of ghosts _inside his body_. Which yes, was a disturbing mental image. But it’s not as...messed up as _eating a ghost._ No it was _nothing_ like that. Sure the technical end result of said ghost being inside his body was the same but this would be more like overshadowing without actually taking over...right? Or is he just mentally dissociating from the probable future situation? He’s not going to tell Jazz about any of this. He really probably should though. 

Kitty pulls on his pants, pulling him out of his head and making him look down to her, “what you got Danny?”. 

Danny blinks, the yellow child ghost sitting on his knee as he moves his hand to rub his neck, “it’s kind of...fucked up”. Earning him a few snickers, while he readjusts slightly making sure not to move his knee though, “kinda already got, er, _body squatters_ ”, shrugging awkwardly, “five? Hundredish? What’s the difference?”. There’s a big fucking difference but he is not going down that train of thought. 

The ghosts sort of stare at him for a bit before most start laughing, wheezing, or giving him some seriously concerned looks. Yeah, he should absolutely have a Jazz therapy session if ghosts en masse are concerned about his mental state. Especially with _Skulker_ of all ghosts looking concerned, and a bit impressed, “are you? Is your idea _seriously_ to let you eat us? _Really_? And here I thought you didn’t view yourself as something of a predator”.

Danny flips him off, “that is _not_ what I mean, Ancients-”, cutting himself off and jerking his head skyward at the sound of an approaching hoverboard. He knew his hearing was better than both ghosts, due to his human forms size, and humans, due to ghosts having more sensitive hearing. Looking back to everyone quickly, “I’ll just alter my insides a bit? you all could just hop in intangibly?”. 

Kitty blinks at him, “you’re right, that’s kinda messed up. But it works”. 

Danny cringes when everyone just starts shrugging and making fairly quick work -when everyone notices the hoverboard jet sound- of phasing through his torso. Danny grumbling as he stands, bones creaking as he does so, “I was really hoping someone had a better idea”. Firmly ignoring the weird feeling of ghosts snickering in his torso; the ghostly echoing making it a fair bit weirder. 

Hiding behind bits of trash as he hears Val fly in and look around the alleyway a little. Honestly, this was probably to one real option here, his human flesh -Ancients this was still seriously screwed up- effectively blocking all the weakened ecto-fields from any long-range general scanners. Though he almost snorts over the idea of someone scanning him with a close-range one, considering how he’d show up with over a hundred ecto-fields. Which would actually normally be impossible for any ghost or human to scan as having. 

Sighing as Val leaves, waiting a little bit before creeping out and sticking his head out the alleyway. He’s got no time to be freaked out by the weird shit going on in his body -though he could seriously do with them _not_ poking at his organs. He gets they’re not things ghosts have and that his are probably supremely weird; but still- or anytime to be distracted really. Making a point to walk casually and like absolutely nothing about him is weird or out of his normal, though having the forethought to throw on a jacket from one of the garbage bags; it smells awful but he can’t be bothered to care, he needed something to cover up his half missing limb. 

Pushing the left sleeve into his jean pocket as he meanders down the sidewalk in the direction of the NeverWoods. At least he won’t have to worry about the woods being crowded. It got dubbed the NeverWoods because people never went in it. Recently ghost plants have started growing in there so it’s not surprising there was a reoccurring natural portal there. 

Not even five minutes later -he knows he’s walking drastically slower than normal, he’s firmly ignoring the why for that- he finds himself waiting at a crosswalk for the light only to be practically having a staring contest with Sam and Tuck on the other side. They look both relieved... and pissed off. 


	6. Ghosting A Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny makes some decisions

Walking across and gesturing for them to walk with him, absolutely using Sam to hide his left side as subtly as possible. 

Tuck gestures his hands around the town, “dude, where the Zone have you been?”.

Sam glares at him, “you can’t just extend your vacation punishment because things are slow here”. 

Normally he’d growl a little over that but he’s not really in the mental state to give half a damn. But more than a few ghosts growl for him, earning him some seriously strange looks from his friends. Normally that might make him laugh. 

Tuck quirking an eyebrow, “ignore Sam, she’s being a bitch cause she was worried. Though how the heck did you growl without using your mouth?”. 

Sam reaches around Danny to smack Tuck over the head. Growling out, “he didn’t even text us. Just left us to pick up his slack”. 

Danny hunches his shoulders a bit, speaking sarcastically, “well excuse me. I was a bit busy being tortured”, and keeps walking ignoring them stopping for a few seconds.

Tuck jogs slightly to catch up, “fair enough, explains your voice sounding kinda fucked up. Do I need to remotely hack anyone and ruin their day?”. 

While Sam huffs and rolls her eyes, “he’s clearly fine”. Glaring at Danny over more growling sounds, thinking nothing of the weird direction it’s coming from or it echoing even though Danny’s not in ghost form currently. 

Danny ignores Sam and gives Tuck a strange look, “I...don’t know? Skulker kinda already did that I think?”. He doesn’t need to be able to see Skulker to know he’s grinning widely. 

Tuck whistles, “so it wasn’t just you then? Hunters, I’m guessing? Wasn’t your folks was-”.

Danny bares his teeth a bit and jerks, snapping, “I’m not talking about it”, and walking a little faster, staring at his shoes a bit to make sure he doesn’t trip himself. Pointedly ignoring how Tuck and Sam fall behind him a little and exchange glances. Likely looking annoyed and worried. He knew they got kind of fed up with him getting hurt all the time and with his parents...and him ‘not wanting to talk about it’. 

That was one thing he liked about ghosts. When something bad or messed up happened, once everyone was healed they’d just go on like nothing ever happened usually. They wouldn’t pester him or bring it up really. If they did, it was joking or purely informative. Didn’t mean they forgot about it. No, ghosts rarely forgot about it. No one could hold a grudge like a ghost. 

Sighing a little when they catch back up, Tuck simply saying, “well alright then. You already handled yourself?”. 

Responding curtly, “working on it”. Tuck glaring a little over being short with him, but deciding to comment on his fashion instead, “your jacket smells like shit”. 

Sam squinting at him, “you don’t even own a leather jacket”, squinting a bit more, “did you _steal it_ ”. 

Danny growling slightly, starting to feel a fair bit irritated, “it was in the trash”. Tuck just screws up his face instead of commenting on that. 

Sam plucks the arm of it before actually poking it; which, since his arm isn’t entirely an arm, makes the sleeve flap around slightly. “Danny... _why_ are you wearing a jacket?”. 

Tuck muttering with a bit of jealousy in his voice, “it’s not like you get cold”. Then looking a bit confused over Sam smacking him again. 

Danny huffs, “just...drop it alright”. Shuddering slightly from a few ghosts seemingly patting at his organs and whatnot or something. Muttering quietly, “that is not comforting, stop that. Ancients”. Earning a few laughs, two of which are definitely from Skulker and Reverent. 

Sam huffing and crossing her arms, “fine, whatever. Fix yourself. You probably let them catch you again anyway”. 

Danny jerks to a stop and spins around to glare at her, growling and snapping, “no. I did not”, scrunching his face up a bit and sticking his arms out to the side, ignoring Tuck grimacing at his left sleeve just kinda flopping, “did you even look for me? Cause it sure as shit doesn’t sound like you did”, voice cracking a little bit painfully, “if I could be destroyed I probably damn well would have been. You don’t get to be ticked with me for not wanting to talk about being boiled alive and drowned in liquid nitrogen. And _that_ was the more enjoyable shit”. Turning around and stalking off, leaving them standing still for a bit again and exchanging glances. 

The ghosts all glancing at each other and rolling their eyes over the halfas humans. They don’t get why the two are pushing things. The situations more or less dealt with, why dwell care so much? Easily if they weren’t even involved. Phantom would be fine. If they’re to do anything, they should go off and get their licks in or clean up maybe. Phantom’s support squad were weird, most who’ve met them agree on that. 

Danny just glares a bit angrily forward as they catch up, not one saying anything for a few blocks. Lily breaks the silence by phasing out his back, crawling up under his shit/jacket and pokes out of the jacket collar. In typical ghostly fashion, she completely ignores the messed up shit everyone just went through and instead asks, “did you seriously let them catch you once?”. Making Tuck shriek like a little girl and nearly jump into oncoming traffic. 

Danny winces from the loud car horn before rubbing his neck and nodding, “yeah”, looking to his two friends and rubbing his neck some more, “sorry about being pissy guys. Hasn’t been a good day, or days...week?”. 

Sam mumbling, “it’s okay. Sorry, Danny”. She’s never exactly been good at apologising. 

While Tuck shakes his head and eyeballs Lily, “you mean you don’t know? You were supposed to be back four days ago. Also, _what the fuck_?”. Danny just glares at him so Tuck continues, “right, not talking about it. You know...the spare room is pretty empty”, shrugging and looking away from him, “and my mom always loves having you over”. 

Danny snorts and looks at his shoes as they walk, “that’s cause I actually compliment her cooking”, sighing and acknowledging Tuck’s offer for once, “and maybe, Tuck. I don’t know”. Going back...there today was not something he thinks he can or even should do. But them ‘chasing him out’ rubs his pride the wrong way. His room was a focal point of his lair, it was _his_. And his _grave_ was in that house. He won’t give those up. He won’t give any hunter the satisfaction of chasing him away from what’s _his_. 

Danny’s comment resulting in Tuck pausing and falling behind yet again. Shaking his head and catching up...again, “did you?...are you really considering the offer? What the Zone dude”. Danny glares with bared teeth again, Lily hissing at him before ducking to Tuck doesn’t know where when someone on the street starts getting close to the trio. The guy giving Danny very strange looks but apparently deciding getting involved is just not worth it. Tuck raises his hands up, “never mind, and don’t bite me ghost-that-eats-velociraptors”, clearing his throat, “I mean the offer though”. 

Sam sighs sounding a bit annoyed, “I’d say I have plenty of room but _some people_ don’t like my friends”. 

Danny glares at her slightly, how was she so often more self-centred than every ghost he’s ever met? “At least _some people_ didn’t impale your friends with needles”. 

Tuck grumbling, “for someone who ‘doesn’t want to talk about it’...”, this time getting whacked by Danny not Sam as they enter the NeverWoods, neither Sam nor Tuck asking why Danny’s walking in here. 

Sam shakes her head at Danny, “I don’t get why you don’t just move in with your guardian. It’s not like they’d really notice much. And it’s not like you wouldn’t still be practically living here”. 

All three jumping from a cacophony of echoing ‘WHAT!?!’s followed by multiple variations of ‘YOU HAVE A GUARDIAN?!?’. 

Tuck eyeballing him, “uh? I’m afraid to ask”. While Sam grabs Danny around the shoulder to steady him. 

Danny rubs his neck and looks around before nodding his head at Tuck, “I’ve got a few, uh, roommates?”, steamrolling right over Tuck’s grimace, “and you’re helping build Skulker a new suit”. 

Tuck doesn’t really seem that surprised by that and decides he doesn’t really want to know. Instead poking Danny’s arm and talking towards his jacket, he’s not going to ask where what sounded like a mass of ghosts are, “yeah Danny-dude’s got a guardian ghost, at least that’s what I think they are”, giving Danny a slightly questioning look. 

Danny nods, “they are yeah”, looking to Sam and assuming he’s the only one able to hear all the ghosts muttering and mulling over this brand new gossip. He's not surprised none of them knew, ClockWork wasn’t exactly big on socialising. And they’re probably glad for the distraction while he talks to Sam, “because those two were my _parents_. That means something to most people, Sam”. 

Tuck blinks, “‘were’?”. Putting his hands up again after getting glared at. 

Danny turning his head to the side as the yellow-skinned child ghost pops out of his shoulder and points a bit to the right, “that way!”. Danny sending her a small smile, while Sam mutters, “so there _is_ a point to whatever we’re doing’.

The three coming to a stop a few minutes later at spotting the rather large portal. Tuck whistling, “damn, that’s pretty big”, he wants to ask why Danny was looking for a portal when there was one in his basement; he’s pretty sure he’ll get glared at again. 

All three turning to look to the ghost floating next to it. Danny’s unsure what’s going on with pretty well all the ghosts he’s smuggling around as they seem to be moving closer to his back and behind organs and bones. He feels like they’re hiding but that’s kinda weird for them to be doing. Regardless he waves, “hey CW. I’m guessing there’s a reason you’re here?”. He can practically feel shock emanating off of all the ghosts. 

ClockWork floats over, Danny lifting his one hand for them to hook their tail around a finger and perch on. All the ghosts seemingly crowding down in his lower abdomen for some reason. “Always Daniel. But I think it’s best you send your guests on their way”.

Danny doesn’t even get the chance to make the request to the group, all the ghosts practically shooting out of him; making both Sam and Tuck yelp and go bug-eyed. ClockWork smirking at all of them as they change to their child form. 

Danny quirking an eyebrow at all the ghosts, “uh, thanks?”. Danny looks over the group quickly, everyone looked largely okay. Somewhat. They’d be fine with time, especially in the Zone. Well...all but one anyway. Lifting his hand a little to bring attention to ClockWork to distract himself, “you asked about my Guardian”. 

Everyone glances from cloaked ghost to Phantom a few times, realising he wasn’t joking and didn’t seem to understand at all _why_ that was freaking them out. There’s no way the ghost leaking waves of pure power was not an Ancient. Pretty well all of them deciding that they do not want to know. Messing with an Ancient was asking for trouble. But also a bit impressed with the strange halfa. Skulker grins as they all leave, Phantom was even more desirable now. He had the favour of an Ancient, was functionally the child of one. Sure, if he had any hope before of actually catching the halfa, said hope would be all kinds of dead. 

Danny blinks, that was...weird. Raising an eyebrow at ClockWork, who simply smirks and gestures their staff to his stomach making Danny grimace, “uh, do you really think I know how to deal with... _that_ ”. Sam and Tuck just exchange confused glances, though fairly used to feeling confused when ClockWork was in the mix. 

ClockWork apparently takes pity on him, quickly waving a bundle of Ipecac root under his nose; which has the wonderful effect of near-instantly making him vomit up the five SignalShines; and whatever else happened to be in his stomach, which was precisely nothing. Ancients, he was going to be starving when his brain remembered to be. 

Sam mumbling, “okay, now _I_ don’t want to know”. Tuck, for his part, is actually a little more curious. While Danny cradles the little ghosts in his one hand, letting them get support from his ecto-energy. Grumbling at ClockWork, “thanks I think”, and not sure how to feel over ClockWork leaning forward and petting the SignalShines; which nuzzle _Danny_ instead of ClockWork. 

ClockWork chuckles, “well they seem found of you”. 

“Well they have gotten to know me on a really internal level”. Both Sam and Tuck grimace heavily, though Danny making a joke means he’ll be at least kind of okay. 

ClockWork smiles softly before floating up off Daniel’s hand, gesturing to the portal. Daniel was tough, nigh indestructible, but that was only physically. Mentally he was simply strong and accustomed to suffering. He needed a true break, true vacation. Plus he could hardly keep the little SignalShines with him while staying with his makers. And that’s all it will take to convince the boy, “and I certainly have no objections to having shines around”. 

Danny raising an eyebrow before looking up after the little SignalShines manoeuvre up into his hair. 

Sam snorting and laughing, rather hard to be annoyed with him dropping his shit on them as usually and after being missing for days, when his hair’s got a couple of little blinking blob ghosts running all over it; like they were exploring or kneading a fresh nest. Tuck smiling and patting Danny on the shoulder, “I don’t think you’ve got a choice dude. You’ve been chosen”. 

Danny sighs and talks up to his hair, part of him is surprised they want anything to do with him after everything, “they’re going to have to learn how to hide in the human public”. Sam laughing into her hand a bit harder at the blobs burrowing into his hair, effectively disappearing from sight, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Danny”. 

Danny rubs his neck and looks around before turning back to ClockWork, who raises their eyebrow slightly. Danny knows what ClockWork’s offering. To live with them. To not go back to FentonWorks. To not stay there. After everything, all the years of ghost hatred and shooting at him, with what just happened; that place wasn’t really home. And...he had pretty well already decided those two weren’t really his ‘parents’ anymore. But his lair Core, his grave. If this was any other ghost offering this or him being offered to just take up official residence in the Zone, he’d be worried about not being able to keep as close of an eye on his lair here. But he knows ClockWork would, and has, let him use the mirrors to watch over everything. And ClockWork wouldn’t take offence to him not being with them often; most ghosts would if they took a child ghost into their lair. 

So it’s just his grave and the core/focal point of his lair that truly holds him back. But...but his room was a place of pain really. Where he slept between battles, and treated wounds. Where he bled, shook from exhaustion, and tried to ignore what Jack and Maddie were doing in the rest of the house. His room was his lairs core yes, but was it so just because it was really the only safe place for anything ghostly to be? He could take everything, logically, from it. Cleanse it of his ecto-energy too. It wouldn’t be hard, those two wouldn’t notice. And did they even deserve to get to have access to the core of his lair? They could walk into his room easy enough. Do things to it. Danny shivers a little. 

It wasn’t unheard of for a ghost to relocate, entirely or even just their lair core; just uncommon. Danny himself was uncommon so that didn’t really matter. But to not even have their lair core inside their lair, that was likely unprecedented. Also exactly the kind of thing ClockWork or him would be involved in. And it would...protect his lair probably. He would always be a protector. Ultimately, he can’t keep his lair core where so many, himself included, were hurt. Have been getting hurt. His Core pushing a bit pained at that, “yeah, I...I’m not going back there. I can’t”. 

Sam and Tuck both blink at him and go slack-jawed. Tuck whispering, “oh holy fuck”. Tuck pulling out his PDA after a few seconds, he absolutely _is_ going to hack everything if Danny’s ‘folks’ messed up badly enough for Danny to just...move out. Seeing his eyes glowing slightly green also makes it pretty obvious his ghost side was entirely in agreeance with moving. 

Danny leans against a tree and kind of stares at ClockWork, “but the...portal?”. He doesn’t want them touching his grave. Looking at his grave. Being near his grave. Anything involving his grave. They’d used it to hurt, to hurt so bad, so much. If it was anything else, if it wasn’t his grave, he’d want it destroyed. They’ve done so much harm with it. Fuelling their weapons and experiments. Creating and putting out more and more bigoted biased incorrect harmful research and papers. Becoming a bit hyper-aware of the SignalShines snuggling at his scalp. And now...now he knew they were entering it. Using his grave to access the Zone. Taking samples, inducting ghosts, probably destroying ghosts. That’s already things he just can’t let them do, and they’d only get bolder. Go deeper, take more, maybe...attack or add things. But he...he _can’t_ destroy it, let someone destroy it. It’s his _grave_. Twitching, what was he to do? This isn’t okay and something has to be done. Not doing anything about Jack and Maddie’s ways is what led to this situation. He was an idiot to hope they would see ghosts, experience them, and they’d change, they’d grow, they’d be better. Not worse. They only got worse. Or really, they hadn’t gotten worse they had just gotten _better_ at what they’ve always done and wanted to do. And that drive to hurt is what made his grave, what half killed him. He took a little small amount of pride in being a protector created from hurt and harm. 

Jerking out of his thoughts from ClockWork bopping him on the nose with their staff. Tuck muttering, “geez, out of it enough to even be tuning CW out”. 

While Daniel crosses his eyes to look at ClockWork, who moves to sit on the bridge of Daniel’s nose and lean against the space between his eyes. Resting their staff across their lap before speaking, “as I was saying, there is nothing in this universe which is truly stagnant. Everything grows, everything changes, everything _moves_. And in the end, to create something is not a form of taking ownership. So too what and who creates us does not own us. But we all own our life and our death, death much more so; something with the possibility of eternity behind it”, floating off and turning around to look at Daniel, “that Ian yours to move as you please”. 

Danny blinks, if anyone else said that he’d question them. Ask who that could be safe, moving an artificial portal contained in metal machinery. ClockWork knee exactly how though and this solves every issue really. Outside of the hurt it will cause the two. But...he can’t do nothing anymore. Danny nods, “I...okay”. 

Sam throws her hands out to the side, getting Danny’s attention, “what about Amity?!? You can’t just _leave_ ”.

ClockWork glares alight and floats in front of her face, “yes. Yes he can”, narrowing their eyes slightly and dropping their voice some, “you don’t own him either”. Easily avoiding her swatting at them slightly, which both Danny and ClockWork baring their teeth at her over that. 

ClockWork turns their back on Sammantha and addresses Daniel, while Tucker mouths ‘what the Hell is your issue’ at her. ClockWork patting Daniel’s head, “worry not. I’d say it’s pretty obvious to the two of us that you’ll be as vigilant as ever and as much a staple of Amity as always”. Getting a slight laugh from Daniel. ClockWork winks, acknowledging that a situation was bad and arguably deeply unpleasant wasn’t ever truly a good method of approach with Daniel. At least not without time having pasted since. “Also, your thermos and it’s contents are perfectly fine. Everything’s been dealt with”. While ClockWork was barred from interfering much or altering the future normally. That didn’t apply with Daniel and his future, with their child. They’re glad to get a relieved and more genuine smile from Daniel. 

Danny feels a fair amount of tension leave his body, even if he still felt like he needed to sleep for a week and rest his functionally rebuilt-from-goop body. Nodding at ClockWork thankfully before looking to Sam, “I’m not ‘retiring’ or whatever. So just...don’t, Sam”. She glares at him a little and huffs but says nothing. 

Tuck tries to fix things a little, squeezing Danny’s shoulder and smiling, “so is this your way of saying you’re taking over the Zone instead of FentonWorks”. Raising his hands pacifyingly when Danny glares at him and hisses slightly. 

Danny rolls his eyes and weakly pushes Tuck after a while, “sorry. Not in the best place right now”. Tuck just waves him off. 

ClockWork gestures at the portal, “there are better places to be”. 

Danny just shrugs, he’s not up for doing anything really. Just collapsing on ClockWork’s couch or his bed there, is really all he thinks his brains really going to be able to put up with for a while. Looking to Tuck who shrugs too, he’ll follow Danny wherever. Even if Danny started killing people for some reason or gave up on the living world. The two boys looking to Sam with raised eyebrows. 

Sam crosses her arms, “so what? You’re just going to give up on them? Not even try changing things? You’re stronger than that”. 

Danny shakes his head, “no. No, I’m not. I’m done”. Tuck points at him, “technically he is changing things”. 

Sam stares at them before sighing and dropping her arms, “fine”, walking over to the portal, “and I can’t leave you boys alone. You’ll start cuddling again”, throwing a slight glare at ClockWork before stepping through the portal. 

Tuck looks to Danny, “she’s never going to let us live that down, is she?”.

Danny rubs his half-formed arm a little but smirks at Tuck, “only one of us does much of the whole ‘living’ thing”. Earning a head shake from Tuck before he walks through the portal too. 

Danny looking to ClockWork, “I’m not really sure what to do with this. But uh, thanks. What’s going to happen though? With everything? My...grave?”. 

ClockWork smiles slightly, “everything will work out. You’ll see them again. In another time. In another place. In another way. And it will be okay”. ClockWork floats closer and pushes/gifts some of their ecto-energy to his Core. Giving him enough energy to take his ghost form. Promptly cradling the child ghost in his arms, Daniel mumbling, “okay”, and snuggling closer into his guardian. The closeness of their Cores prompting him to mentally check out and rest; feeling the safeness of his guardian and a stronger ghost being near to take the burden of being the one everyone would turn to for safety. ClockWork crinkles their eyes a little over the SignalShines vibrating and running around Daniel’s hair in confusion; slightly startled by the size change, but already adjusting to the strangeness of their sire. ClockWork hums pleasantly, calmingly, speaking to Daniel before he checks out entirely while floating through the portal, “no one else will lay hand nor claw on your grave, other than you”. Smiling mischievously as they set Daniel down in bed, before brushing a hand through his hair. The little ghosts stilling and vibrating from feeling ClockWork’s powerful ecto-field brush by them.

Having them around would help him more than he knew and they were certainly going to enjoy all the chaos around the child ghost. Jack and Maddie, however, ClockWork frowns slightly, it would be a while before they even noticed. They lost any right or claim to him or his existence the day he was born really.

**End.**


End file.
